I can't add an existing vault in Android app because the folder is outside of my main Google Drive folder

Here’s a screenshot:

Instead of making the backup folder inside the main Google Drive, I want it to be on a totally separate hard drive (my external drive). I set that folder to Backup in the Google Drive app, and I’ve encrypted it into a Cryptomator Vault.

The problem is when I open the Android app, because the folder is not inside my main Google Drive folder, I can’t add it in the Android app because it doesn’t exist in the list of options to add.

Is there a solution for this?

Hey and welcome to the Cryptomator Community :slightly_smiling_face:,

In some other locations you can create a shortcut using Shift + Z and add this to the My Drive location but this doesn’t work in the Computers area so I have currently unfortunately no further ideas at the moment.

I was able to create the shortcut in the “My Drive” location – However, it still won’t appear correctly in the Cryptomator Android app. The shortcut does show in the Android app, but it shows up as a “file” instead of a folder. So you cannot open it or click on the masterkey file.

Would there be a solution for this in the near future?
The reason I need to add a folder outside of “My Drive” is becuase the folder is 400+ GB. It exists on my external storage drive only. If I were to add that folder directly into “My Drive” it would sync to my laptops that have small hard drives, and use up all the space.

So I need to keep it as a separate location folder – but now I cant find a way to add it into the Android app. Can this be fixed?

There are two different types of shortcuts. One if you right click on a folder and choose Add a shortcut to drive and the other one if you select a folder and click Shift + Z. The first one creates a file of type application/vnd.google-apps.shortcut which Cryptomator currently interpretes as normal file. The second variant creates a normal (linked) folder which can be used as normal folder but which doesn’t work from the “Computers” location.

For sure, I can completely understand the need of this!

I’m not really sure to be honest, currently I don’t think that it is possible. It is interesting that when I don’t specify any query parameters while executing the list method against the Google cloud, I get the results from the “Computers” locations too but the problem is, that there isn’t a method to know if this is a folder you named “Computers” or it is this Google drive location. There are a lot of requests in this direction in Googles bug tracker like e.g. https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/172775993 or Google Issue Tracker but I don’t think that there is a possibility to implement this without the help of Google :confused: . They need to provide an interface to query this folder like they do with Shared drives.

Just created this issue to track this problem: Cannot add or create a vault using Google's "Computers" location · Issue #363 · cryptomator/android · GitHub

Unfortunately, Shift Z does not seem to work in the “Computers” location on any of the folders. However, it does work on folders within “My Drive.” So it looks like for now, I will be unable to use the Android app until this issue is fixed in the future. Thanks for creating an issue to track this!

Yeah, sorry to have not better news at this moment. If you want a refund, just let me know.