Unable to share Vault on local network when using WinFSP Local Drive

[Anshul99]

So I recently updated my Cryptomator to the latest version, 1.9.0. I was using Dokany earlier, but since that’s deprecated now, I had to switch to WinFSP. So I selected WinFSP Local Drive in my settings.

Now, I can’t share my drive on the local network. Used to work flawlessly earlier. But now I keep getting the error in the image above.

I used to have some custom mount options earlier for Dokany, but I disabled them for WinFSP as advised in the thread.

So I dunno what’s wrong and would appreciate any help. I just want to mount my vault as a local drive and share it on my local network so I can access it from my phone.

[Anshul99]

I still can’t find any solution, but I’d prefer to just go back to the old version with Dokany.

Can anyone please clarify which last version supported Dokany properly? Would there be any issues in rolling back?

[roostersnowstormlion]

Hey I had the same issue. Updated and can no longer share drives on Windows.

It appears according to the docs it network share doesn’t work when mounted as a [WinFSP Local Drive]. Volume Type — Cryptomator 1.7.0 documentation see the note there.

The workaround is to mount it as a directory/folder then share that folder. So you mount it in “D:\MyShareFolder” and then you share "D:" so you can access your share folder over the network.

The only problem is when accessing the share folder over the network, it isn’t able to open some directories for some reason. I can’t pin it down on why but any folder name that is too long or has spaces then it will fail to open. It fails to open files too.

Kind of annoying.

[Anshul99]

Thank you, it works now. For anyone else perhaps reading this:

After mounting it to a folder, I still couldn’t share the folder. But I could share the drive, so I just shared the whole drive, and it works now.

Now I still wanted to mount it as a drive for some workflow and backup processes, so I used the Subst command.

Still, Dokany was much easier to use earlier. This is all a big roundabout to get functionality that was easy with Dokany

[roostersnowstormlion]

You don’t have issues when browsing the shared directory?

[Anshul99]

Not yet, but will check more and see if there are any issues. But one annoying thing is that the ‘date modified’ does not seem to appear properly when accessing through the network.

[LeoW]

@Anshul99

So I dunno what’s wrong and would appreciate any help. I just want to mount my vault as a local drive and share it on my local network so I can access it from my phone.

Here are other options that may work for you.
First, are you using iphone or Android?

Windows 10/11 has the built in option in the Settings app to load Open SSH Server.
This will turn your Windows PC into an SFTP server!

From either an iphone, or Android phone, you can install an SFTP client app. This will let you mount on your phone, whatever you have on your PC.

So, you use Cryptomator to mount the vault to a folder in your home drive for example. Then when you connect via SFTP while using your Windows id/password you will land by default in your home folder where your vault will be mounted.

This next option will only work on Android, and you’ll need to buy the Cryptomator mobile app.

There is an app for Android called Round-sync. It’s located at Github. You can use it on Android to mount your Windows SMB share, or SFTP, both ways will work.

This is the better and safer option because you don’t have to leave your vault mounted and unlocked on windows all of the time. Your Android phone will be able to mount and access the encrypted vault stored in your home folder on your P C.

I have Round-sync mount different clouds and servers on Android, and then Cryptomator will see them as “Local” files.

The app owlfiles is a nice, free file explorer that runs on both Android and iphone. It will let you mount your windows computer and get to your vault files that you have exposed but this again means that you have to leave your vault unlocked all the time. Defeats the purpose of having the files encrypted.

I don’t know the iphone world, so I don’t know how an iphone would access files on a Windows computer that are visible to cryptomator for iPhone.

Another option is to sync the vault to Google Drive and then simply use the Cryptomator mobile app to access Google Drive.

There are several ways to skin the cat.