Vault Mounting

After a vault is unlocked, it must be integrated into the system to be accessible for you. Cryptomator uses three different technologies (called adapters) for this integration:

  1. WebDAV - a standardized protocol to manage directories and resources

  2. Dokany - a windows specific driver for a deeper system integration

  3. FUSE - a linux specific kernel module for a deeper system integration, also available for macOS

Each combination of operating system and adapter has its own set of settings and its benefits & drawbacks.

General Adapter Selection

Cryptomator only uses one adapter type to serve all your unlocked vaults. If you want to change it or only want to know which one is currently used, open the Preferences by clicking the gears symbol in the upper right corner of the main window and change to the Virtual Drive tab.

You can choose between WebDAV and, depending on your system, Dokany (Windows) or FUSE (linux, macOS).

Note

Dokany/FUSE may not be visible for selection. This means that Cryptomator is unable to detect a valid installation of them.

WebDAV has additional options for configuration:

  1. WebDAV Port - Always present, it shows the port over which the WebDAV adapter communicates with itself.

  2. WebDAV scheme - TODO

Options applicable to all Systems and Adapters

In this section mount options are described which are present on all operating systems and with all adapter types.

Currently there is only on option, namely opening a vault in Read-Only mode. If the checkbox is set, you can unlock the vault, browse through its content and read or copy its files, but you cannot change or modify anything inside the vault.

WebDAV-specific options

WebDAV is a communication protocol to perform operations between a client (you) and a server (your computer) on directories and resources. Even thou this protocol was designed for remote access, Cryptomator uses it only locally to display your files and allows you to work with them.

Windows

MacOS

Linux

Dokany-specific options

In order to add and retrieve files to your vault, Cryptomator mounts a file system on your machine, that allows to work with your files. In general, when you want to create a new file system on Windows, that can be mounted by Cryptomator, you need to develop a file system driver.

Developing a device driver (other than FAT or NTFS) that works in kernel mode on Windows is extremely technical. By using Dokan, you can create your own file systems very easily without writing device drivers. Cryptomator takes care of all this. Dokany is a fork of Dokan 0.6.0 with bug fixes, clean change history and updated to build with latest tools.

You might want to apply Dokany-specific options to the Dokany file system driver on unlocking and opening your vault. You can do so by adding them to the VaultOptions of your vault. Check the CustomMountOptions on the Mounting tab.

Windows

Because these options are part of third party libraries, they are not listed here. Info about these Dokany options can be found in the Javadoc of our dokany-nio-adapter and the Dokany API documentation.

FUSE-specific options

Filesystem in USErspace (FUSE) is a software interface for Unix and Unix-like computer operating systems that lets non-privileged users create their own file systems without editing kernel code. Cryptomator mounts a file system on your machine using FUSE and allows to display your files and work with them.

If you want to apply FUSE-specific options on unlocking and opening your vault, you can add them to the VaultOptions of your vault. Check the CustomMountOptions on the Mounting tab.

MacOS

Because these options are part of third party libraries, they are not listed here. Info about these FUSE options on Mac can be found in the wiki of the osxfuse project.

Linux

As before, these options are not listed here, because they are part of third party libraries. Info about these FUSE options on Linux can be found in the man page for mount.fuse.

Note

The options allow_root and allow_other cannot be applied to the VaultOptions without a change to the /etc/fuse.conf configuration file for FUSE on your machine. Witin this file, the user_allow_other option needs to be enabled / uncommented.