Migrating from BoxCryptor+Dropbox: how versions work?

Hello. I’m migrating from Dropbox+Boxcryptor bundle to Cryptomator. I’ve read documentation and installed the latest Windows version. There are some questions which occurred immediately. Could you please answer some questions?

  1. When I create new vault I’m able to select only 2 options: OneDrive and CustomLocation. There is no option for Google Drive or Dropbox. (I personally use Dropbox). What is the reason for it? Is Cryptomator trying to discover Dropbox folder on my PC and just fails?
  2. Okay, I created Vault with Custom location and picked one of the folders in Dropbox which I want to be encrypted. I see that filename encryption is always on in Cryptomator. On the other hand here it says that
    “If several devices access a document at the same time, and synchronization conflicts arise as a result, Cryptomator detects them despite file name encryption. Additionally, the version history from your cloud storage provider is preserved as you know it.”
    Can anyone explain me how it works and how could I restore previous version of some file?
    With Dropbox+Boxcryptor I didn’t use filename encryption because I needed version history from DropBox. When some file was accidentally or incorrectly changed I went to DropBox site and restored previous version of this file.
    How does this mechanism work with Cryptomator?

Thanks in advance

Add on:
When Dropbox meets conflict it creates new file adding “conflicting copy from XXX PC” to the filename. In this case all computers syncing with the cloud will have access to both copies.
With filename obfuscation how does it work? How two conflicting copies will work in this case?

Hi.

Regarding vault locations:

So I assume your Google Drive or dropbox installation path is not standard. Yes, as you did the way is then to use the custom location function.

Regarding version:
thank you for pointing this out. Im sorry to say this text is misleading. Let me explain: from a technical point of view, the encrypted files do have a versioning if the provider supports file versioning at all. But, as you do not know which encrypted file belongs to which unencrypted file, theres no usecase for this fileversioning at the moment. There is a discussion running how to implement a “reveal file name” function in the app, so you can at least find out which encrypted file belongs to the file you want to restore a version, so you can find that file at the online storage and use the providers file versioning feature to restore a previous version of the encrypted file. But this is not yet implemented. In short: there is no function available that allows you to restore a previous version from a file within your vault.
The text in the blogpost will be updated to avoid this misunderstanding.

Regarding conflict:
This is basically the same as you are used to from dropbox.

Thank you very much for the detailed explanation.
Yes my Dropbox path is not standard. It’s C:\Dropbox. But custom folder works well.
Conflicts work for me a bit different. When I created conflict. There appeared two files: FileName and Filename(1). Not as informative as in dropbox itself (when it says from which computer is conflicting copy). But this is also acceptable.
Not being able to trace encrypted name from the original is something I really need. I found that there is a discussion about making names obfuscation optional (especially when so many users came from BoxCryptor where it existed). But I understand that this is a big feature and needs a lot of testing due to possible side effects.
As about revealing filename: is this feature currently in progress? I followed your link, but it shows only MacOS. I don’t see this drop zone in the current release for Windows.

Thank you very much

The development is in progress for all desktop OS, but there’s no ETA I can tell you. Based on the infos from GitHub it’s planned for version 1.7.

Thank you. Will wait for the version 1.7

FYI: beta of 1.7 was released. Feel free to join the test.