Android: Feature of Opening local Vault

[gynet]

It would be nice that cryptomator-android could have the ability to loading local vaults, so that it decouple the dependency on the cloud services on the mobile platform.

I know some people are using tagspaces + 3rd part of cloud sync app on Android system. I wonder how Cryptomator handle this situation,

[markuskreusch]

We already have this feature request for the iOS app. The situation there is that we decided to postpone the implementation until we got insight into relevant use cases.

The difference on android is that an android device actually has a file system and other apps like sync apps you mentioned may access that. So we will consider this feature but at the moment I guess our first release will not provide the creation of local vaults.

[Mihara]

...Well, then the first release is going to be completely useless for my use case, where file synchronisation is typically handled by software like DropSync and company...

[markuskreusch]

The scope of the first release is to provide an app that is more or less equal to the iOS app regarding the provided Cloud providers and functions.

Adding the possibility of local vaults is a lot more effort because there are some big differences when operating on a local file system (which may be changed by other processes concurrently) or operating on a cloud via an API which manages concurrent access. Especially a sync client could introduce synchronization conflicts which must be handled somehow.

When we add this feature we will launch another beta so anyone interested will be able to test it.

If you need this feature you may add a thumbs up reaction to the inital post.

[tobihagemann]

Thanks for giving some insight on typical use cases on the Android platform. That's what we're trying to explore and that's what the beta is for. Please don't let this end in a dreadful discussion and be open according to our code of conduct.

"Useless" is highly exaggerated, because Cryptomator is not(!) synchronizing the whole vault. Cryptomator downloads the files on-demand. Just because you're using DropSync as an example, doesn't mean you technically can't use Cryptomator. It's just not "highly optimized" for your use case.

As @markuskreusch pointed out, we can't implement every feature for our very first final version 1.0. Of course, we understand that we're going to differ from our iOS app, because it's a whole different ecosystem, but we have to start somewhere. We're just at the very beginning of a beta.

[Mihara]

@tobihagemann

Just because you're using DropSync as an example, doesn't mean you technically can't use Cryptomator. It's just not "highly optimized" for your use case.

Just because I'm using DropSync _as an example,_ does not mean this is the only synchroniser I am using, though. I actually run as many as four different synchronisation utilities, _(primarily for historical reasons, every cloud provider brings specific gimmicks to the table and they are situationally useful)_ and do not anticipate staying with Dropbox in the future. If something is not "highly optimized" for the use case which is generic with respect to cloud providers, it vendor locks me into those providers it supports, only.

Wasn't _not_ doing that part of the original idea?

[frank-github]

same here, like to use local vault and sync with another app

[gynet]

It would be nice to decrypt everything and map to a partition just as the same as PC version.

[thesummer]

Having this feature would offer a generic solution for all currently unsupported cloud services (nextcloud, seafile, google drive, etc.).

Of course the direct support with download on demand is more convenient, but for me synching the whole vault to my phone an then decrypting it locally would still be a suitable workflow.

[ghost]

:+1:
Would be nice to be able to open a vault synced by a third party app.
I am using Hubic as provider and FolderSync on Android with some fine tuning to sync my files.

Thanks for your work

[tobihagemann]

Surprise! If you've followed this issue along, we've gone from "not planned at all" to "maybe later in 0.x" and now it's finally implemented in 0.4 (released just now). :tada:

Thank you all for your feedback! We saw that there was a huge demand on this feature (15 thumbs up is quite a lot compared to other feature requests) and couldn't resist to implement it earlier than planned.

If you find any bugs with local storage, please don't hesitate to submit a new issue. :smile:

[gynet]

Thank you for listening to our feedback, that's a great feature!

[thesummer]

Is it also possible to open a vault on an sd-card?
Somehow it seems to me that I can only see the directories of the internal storage, but I am not sure if am missing something.

[SailReal]

@thesummer thanks for your feedback and you're right: sd-card support will be coming in the 0.5.0 update :smile:

[markuskreusch]

To tell a little about the current situation:
On some devices the sdcard is part of the so called "external storage". On such devices the sdcard can already be accessed. On other devices this is not the case. On those we will add sdcard support (hopefully with 0.5.0). This may be limited to devices running at least Android 5.0 (Lollipop) because we will have to use ACTION_OPEN_DOCUMENT_TREE to request access to the sdcard from the user.

[jmaris]

Using owncloud to sync personally, therefore I can't use cryptomator on my phone at all, I really hope it will open up opening existing vaults in the future

[tobihagemann]

@jmaris That's another feature request. See WebDAV support #11, which is planned for the next version 0.5.