Using Obsidian with Cryptomator on Android

Hello,
I’m fairly new to Cryptomator, and very new to Cryptometer Android (just took advantage of last week’s price offer), so apologies if these questions are a bit basic - haven’t quite worked out how everything works :slight_smile:
I’ve only just started using Obsidian on my PC, and was wondering if anyone has got this working using Cryptometer Android? Or will this require the upcoming Document Provider feature?
Would be great to have a secure sync to my Android mobile as well.
Thanks.
Shaun.

I am not using Obsidian, but from what I read (plain text file based) my answer would be: yes. You’ll need the document provider to get this to work with cryptomator android.

Thanks Michael.

Saves me having to do too much further researching.

I was also looking at at another app i use called todo.txt which saves down to text files also and will have a similar problem.

How do most people use it without this functionality? Just for viewing text files, or pictures without doing any editing?

Anyone have any workflow tips?

Not sure if the android version of the app will be of that much use to me really currently.
I suppose, at least I will have it for future use, when the extra features are implemented.

You use the android app by sharing files from the vault to the app you want to work with. After your done you share the file back to the vault
Some files like textfiles can be viewed/edited directly in cryptomator, some can only be viewed (pictures for example).

Oh, i see, so you are editing the file in memory then share without saving? So the file doesn’t get saved down to the native file system unencrypted…

I opened a text file in a notepad app, and clicked the "always open with " option and don’t see a way of reverting and opening with another app now…

I guess it will be saved local and unencrypted as soon as you share the file with an app. But you decide if this is permanent or temporary.

This will also not change with document provider. If you want an app to work with a file, the file has to be decrypted at some point and stored in that state.

If you do not want any file on your phone unencrypted, the only way I know to achieve this is to enable the phone encryption (which I always recommend)

Thanks, it’s all beginning to make sense now.
My Android mobile should be encrypted (i thought this is the default these days?)

Your Android is probably whole disk encrypted. But that prevents primarily from people with physical access to a locked device. It doesn’t prevent other apps with permissions from snooping on what you might have saved in Downloads or Documents or maybe some other folders.

Workflow - the first step for accessing on your phone something saved in a cryptomator vault is through the cryptomator app. You cannot currently access your file on android from anywhere else because the cryptomator app is needed to unencrypt it.
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If it is a text file you can open and edit it from directly within the cryptomator app. Likewise you can view photos within the cryptomator apps although I don’t think you can edit it. I don’t think any other file types can be directly accessed in cryptomator app. But for text files, photo files, and all other file types you can still share them from cryptomator into any other app on your phone that receives shares. Then after editing you can share it back to cryptomator if you like. But that process will leave a copy of the edited file left unencrypted in the other app that you have to go back and clean up.

So I tend to do most of my organizing and editing on pc or linux desktop for things like spreadsheets (libre office). I mostly only use the android app to capture things (especially photos) and to view things in the vault if I need to do that when i’m away from my desktop.

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Thanks for that comprehensive answer. Very useful!

i am the same problem:
wanna have an obsidian vault on cloud, encrypted.
even i paid for obsidian service, i dont trust them so i wont paid.

however, obsidian files are just .md markdown files.

i now plan to put obsidian vault on gdrive, inside a ctmt vault.
it’s easy to sync to pc.

for android, we can use ctmt to access it AS PLAIN TXT.
yes in this way it’s not obsidian any more, however even in PC i frequently use this way to interact /w my obsidian vault.

yeah i just tested.

for .md tiles inside ctmt vault on gdrive,
one can “open with” markor to edit it.

as a temp solution…

Hi, thanks for following up on my original thread.

These days, I never use Cryptomator on Android (just on desktop).
Hopefully the document provider arrives one day.

it wont, not the near future. not a little bit.