Adding Files or Folders to A Vault - Copy or Move?

[Michael]

Well, I guess that’s a question for what purpose you want to use Cryptomator.
In my case the vaults are just for online backup purposes. I’m not working directly with the files in. So I of course copy the files and do not move them.

By the way: you could be interested in this thread and why moving files into a vault on windows is technically nothing else than copy them and delete the „original“

Encryption on the fly

From a technical point of view, you can’t move files between different file systems. Since the virtual drive provided by Cryptomator is a different file system, it’s always a copy. However, an operating system can simulate a move by “copying first and then deleting the old copy”. That’s what Windows is doing under the hood and this is totally up to the operating system, not Cryptomator itself.

And last but not least: Cryptomator is designed for online storage purposes. If you „just“ want to encrypt your local files, you might want to consider tools that are made especially for this purpose, like veracrypt.