I’m trying to save / download documents directly from other Android Apps (e.g. browser app, and other apps) to my Cryptomator vault in Android. I can’t seem to figure this out.
Is this a limitation on Android? Is this possible in iOS mobile devices?
Thanks
I’m not 100% sure but I think this is not working for you because the Cryptomator app itself needs to encrypt the downloaded file, before it gets added to a vault.
I doubt a browser app or any other app is going to be able to drop files directly into an encrypted vault without first going through the Cryptomator app. This likely applies to both Android and ios although somebody with more experience than myself and somebody who actually has an ios device would need to chime in and provide further details.
I just tried long pressing on a download link on a web page and then selected share and then chose cryptomator As the app that I wanted to share the file to and it let me do it the only problem was it downloaded a text file of the link to the downloaded file not the actual download.
Personally, my vaults are not stored directly on my Android phone they are on servers and the cryptomator app needs to talk to those servers using its configuration settings and I don’t think third party apps have the ability to do that today.
I think this has been a topic of discussion in the past only the functionality is not there today I don’t think. There would need to be a way for cryptomator to securely communicate with other apps.
Perhaps somebody else has some more background information on this subject?
With Cryptomator on Windows, once I “Save” the document in the Cryptomator vault, Cryptomator immediately encrypts it in the hard drive. Only the unencrypted version is shown when the vault is opened.
On Windows, a virtual drive is mapped using WinFSP/Dokany/WebDav to which Cryptomator is “attached” and it appears like any other drive/folder in Explorer (Security Architecture — Cryptomator 1.7.0 documentation). On iOS, cryptomator is integrated in the Files app since the 2.0 version of the iOS app. I suppose a similar integration is what you’re asking for, but the android feature equivalent (document provider via storage access framework) is unfortunately not support (yet). It’s a feature that has been requested in the past, but takes significant effort to implement, see blog post Update on the Document Provider Development and the related github issue Allow vault access by other apps through Document Provider · Issue #35 · cryptomator/android · GitHub.
Sharing a file from one app to Cryptomator using the “share”-button is the closest thing you can do on android at the moment, see Working with Vaults — Cryptomator 1.7.0 documentation.
Would it be a lot easier, and still functional if Cryptomator were integrated with the Android “Files” app? Not sure if that is the best way or right way to go on Android but I’m not a developer I think the method that you had mentioned document provider development Which I had no idea was so difficult to implement.