How to open an encrypted file? Not trivial at all!

The documentation doesn’t explain for non-specialists how to open an encrypted file.

Say I downloaded from my cloud an encrypted file that I uploaded long ago via Cryptomator. I am on a different computer, and all I have is the password of my vault and the recovery key. What now? How do I open this encrypted file?

Don’t think about single files.
You have a vault. This vault is your encrypted storage. You open the vault and have access to your files in the vault.
If you have a new pc, you sync (means download in the first place) the vault to your pc, open it and then have access to all of your files.
You only need the password and all of your vault files (including the Masterkey file). The recovery key is only if you lost your password and want to recover access to your vault.

Maybe this video helps

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This is one of the critical differences between cryptomator and boxcryptor.

What will happen in the far future when I forget my vault?
With boxcryptor, the vault is not so important. All one needs is a password to open a particular file.

Here is a scenario. I upload a massive amount of files to the cloud (in an encrypted vault). With boxctyptor I can share a single encrypted file with others and forget from the initial vault. In 10 years from now, when this encrypted file will reside in some email account - I will still be able to decrypt it.
That’s the key difference between you and boxcryptor!!!

Do you expect me to save my VAULT for years? All I care about is encrypted files scattered all over the internet, in several places. And when needed, I can decrypt them without a problem (just with my password/master key).

Yes. Cryptomator relies on a vault structure.

Then Cryptomator is not the right solution for you.

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