iOS App - Offline File

Hi,

of course in the ideal world we always have fast internet access on our mobile phones. Thus the files are always in sync on all our devices. However there are areas with limited internet access where it is better being able to open an older version of a file than having nothing at all. I discovered that when I have opened a file within the encypted folder once I can reopen it again even offline. Does anybody know if this is possible for a limited period only?

Thanks.

Markus

Hi Markus.
The iOS app does only support online files. There’s no offline function.

A feature request for offline folders exist at GitHub

Thanks Michael for your support. But how is it possible then that I can open an Excel-File within the Cryptomator folder after switching to my iPhone’s flight mode? Of course only possible if I had opened the same file online a while before going offline.

Actually this is not possible as cryptomator for iOS requires an internet connection. Files are not stored at the device encrypted. They are downloaded and decrypted every time you open them via cryptomator.
If you have to work offline, there’s no other way than downloading and saving the file (unencrypted) on your device before you go offline, work on it locally as long as you are offline, and upload it when you are online again.

Most often the idea is to open selected files in a read only mode and not to work on it.

Of course this is alway possible to copy/save it uncrypted on the device but this is often not wanted as the file stay unencrypted on the device. Also you can need different files. If I copy the full contain the Cryptomator folder uncrypted on a local storage just to be sure you can open a file later, this remove the interest of encrypting my files in a way …This is also complex to handle as you have to keep in sync the local files and the Cryptomator container.

Having the possibility to read some “often used files” in an offline mode would be a great improvement for the IOS application … This would also speed up the opening of often used files.
So often I am stuck as can not open a file indeadly need just because of not connection available.

Lolo

Thanks Michael for your support. But how is it
possible then that I can open an Excel-File
within the Cryptomator folder after switching to
my iPhone’s flight mode?

I had a trial and with latest IOS release, when you go in Flight mode the WiFi connection stay active. This is maybe the reason why you could still open. If you disable wifi too you should not be able to open anymore.
Lolo

1 Like

Thanks Lolo for your input. My WiFi connection is turned off completely when enabling flight mode on my iPhone => I cannot use my internet browser or anything dependend on an internet connection. However, I can open a file within the Cryptomator folder. The only condition is that I opened the file while being online a few moments ago.

Then you are lucky as I get each time this message immediately when connection drop:
“The internet connection appears to be offline.” And no action possible.
Your vault is on a Cloud service or on a WebDAV? This might make the difference ?

Lolo

My vault is on iCloud. Maybe you are right.

Markus

Hi I’m evaluating Cryptomator and so far, I love it. I was reading the above comments from 5 years ago. I wonder if anything has changed. Here’s the scenario.

  1. I copied my entire cryptomator folder to my iPhone (local to it, no sync to any service). The entire encrypted content is there.
  2. I’m able to open it, use it, close it.
  3. when I go to offline mode, it says it needs an internet connection.

Why would it need an internet connection when everything is on my phone or is there something I’m missing?

Thanks!

This thread discussed a problem with the old iOS App. The new iOS app does support offline files, see for example Copy a Cryptomator folder from the cloud to local storage and then open it offline.

The project of the new iOS-App can be found here: GitHub - cryptomator/ios: Cryptomator for iOS