To give others access to your encrypted files, they will need access to the Cryptomator vault and your password.
How do I give others access to the Cryptomator vault?
This depends on the cloud provider you are using. Some allow to share files using the context menu in your file system, others allow to share files using the web interface. Consult the documentation of your cloud provider on how to do it. You have to share the folder with the vault name which contains the file masterkey.cryptomator.
How do I transfer the password?
In general, you should only transfer the password in a secure way. Using an encrypted messaging service, encrypted mail, or similar are feasible. If possible, you may tell the password in person.
What if I only want to share some of my files?
You can create as many vaults as you want. Share one with your family, one with your colleagues, and use one privately.
However you can’t share individual files from within a vault.
Can I revoke access to the vault by changing the password?
No. Even after changing the password, another user could still access the vault using a backup copy of an old key. To disallow access, you will have to create a new vault with a new password and migrate all contents. Only then, everything gets re-encrypted.
Please be aware that even if you do that, a user who once had access may have made copies of all files stored in the vault at that time.
I mean, thanks, but this… would have to get a lot more specific to actually help users like me.
I want to share a google drive folder with others – that’s the whole reason I tried out cryptomator.
This doesn’t even explain if other users need to download Cryptomator to access encrypted google drive folders. I have to assume they do, so did so on a different computer for testing purposes.
Then once they do, how do I connect to the encrypted content? When and how do I enter the password this post discusses, which I set on my original computer? I… have to assume the masterkey.cryptomator file this post mentions has something to do with it. So I, stab in the dark… download it and open it with Cryptomator.
Amazing, it seems to be working! I’m prompted to open an encrypted folder by entering… two passwords. Weird, but worth a try. I enter the same password and get told the “Vault is already initialized.” No other options I can see to open this vault folder in any other way. What next?
I’ve tried internet searches and searching this forum and can’t find anything more specific than this post.
Surely dealing with google drive has to be one of the most uses for Cryptomator and sharing google drive has to be one of the most common uses of it in turn. And I’m supposed to consult google drive’s documentation on how to… use cryptomator? Why would they develop resources so specific? If they have, why aren’t they showing up in internet searches? If it’s something more general I should search for, how would I know what it is?
If you are being prompt to enter 2 passwords, cryptomator is trying to create a new vault. Please make sure you hit the “+” button in cryptomator and select “ad existing vault” to ad an existing vault. After that select your masterkey file in the (local) vault files you want to ad and enter the password for the vault (once).
No, you’ll not find anything about cryptomator there
I’d still like follow up on this question as it is exactly what I am trying to do…sharing encrypted folders/files with others from Google Drive. Please confirm:
Do others need to install CR? I assume yes.
I can share an encrypted folder directly form Google Drive (you send them a link). Once accessed, the encrypted folder contains the two masterkey files. What does the user do with them? Download them? How does CR actually use the key to open the files? (I installed CR on a second machine, then used the Google Drive lin to access the encrypted folder, and downloaded the masterkey file. I then used CR desktop to “Open an existing vault” and navigated to the masterkey. No luck - very long error message)
At best the user does nothing with the key files.
Download the whole vault/vault directory. Inside Cryptomator, add an already existing vault and select the masterkey file.* And afterwards unlock it. This should work.
I don’t know exactly what you mean by sharing a vault only with a google drive link. The vault needs to be present on your harddrive.**
* There should be only one file named masterkey.cryptomator. The other file(s) are only backups.
** There are exceptions, e.g. if someone uses Cyberduck or something else.
OK. Thanks. that worked. So for the benefit of the OP:
Send Google Drive sharing link to the other person
They in turn download the ENTIRE folder to their local drive. It will be a zip file so it needs to be unzipped somewhere first.
They must have CR installed, and then they select “open existing vault” and navigate to the unzipped folder and select the masterkey.
It works. The only downside I see is they must install CR for what may be a one-time task, and they must also download and unzip a folder, AND be familiar with the basics of how CR works to eventually get to the files. For me this is simple but for my family, they won’t get it. I’ll be using AES Crypt instead. As simple as it can get for just sending a handful of encrypted files to a few people.
I’ll still use CR to encrypt all my files on Google Drive regardless. Great for that purpose.
Or they just sync all files they have access to to the local machine using the gdrive client.
Means: person 1 shares the vault with me. My gdrive app knows that and sync these (vault) files to my local drive during the „normal“ sync process.
I add this vault and therefore have any update as long as I keep syncing it.(no need to download it as zip)