Volume Type

After a vault is unlocked, it is integrated (also called mounted) into the operating system to be conveniently accessible for you as a virtual drive. Cryptomator offers different ways of mounting, called volume types, which can be differentiated in three categories:

1. WebDAV related volume types

2. FUSE related volume types and

3. Dokany volume type

Each volume type has its own requirements, settings, benefits & drawbacks.

General Volume Type Selection

The volume type is set app wide in the general preferences of Cryptomator. You view the selected volume type by clicking the gears symbol in the upper right corner of the main window and change to the Virtual Drive tab. The selected volume type will be used to integrate unlocked vaults into the system. If you change it, you need to restart the app in order to use the new volume type.

The choices in the drop down menu depend on your OS and if certain libraries (e.g., macFUSE) are installed. Some volume types allow specifying custom mount options. If supported, these options are specifed for each vault individually in the VaultOptions , mounting tab.

WebDAV Related Volume Types

WebDAV is a standardized communication protocol to perform operations between a client (you) and a server (your local computer) on directories and resources. Even though this protocol was designed for remote access, Cryptomator uses it only locally to display your files and allows you to work with them. It has wide spread support and sufficient performance, but its implementation varies over the OSses.

Since WebDAV starts a local server, it needs a port to communicate with the local filesystem. If the port of the local server is already in use, you can change it in the general preferences, virtual volume tab.

WebDAV (Windows Explorer)

Requirements: Windows

This volume uses the Windows command net use. By default unlocked vaults are mounted as a network drive to a drive letter. Using WebDAV on Windows has the following drawbacks:

• the size of transferred files is restricted to a maximum of 4GB

• the total and free space of the network drive shown in the explorer equals the C: drive, albeit not true

WebDAV (AppleScript)

Requirements: macOS

This volume uses the scripting language AppleScript. By default unlocked vaults are mounted to /Volumes. .. In certain environments, mounting fails with the message osascript: can't open default scripting component. .. The cause is unclear, but there are suggestions, that third party applications/drivers block the execution.

WebDAV (gio)

Requirements: Linux, gio installed

Due to the wide variety of Linux distributions, Cryptomator does only support a direct system integration with the GNOME tool gio. If gio is not installed, unlock your vault with the WebDAV (HTTP Address) and read for your Linux distro how to integrate WebDAV shares.

WebDAV (HTTP Address)

Requirements: None

This volume type is always present and can be used, if any other volume type fails to mount. It simply starts the above mentioned local-only WebDAV server, which can be manually integrated into the system or accessed by a third party application (e.g., CyberDuck).

FUSE Related Volume Types

Filesystem in USErspace (FUSE) is a filesystem interface originally developed for Unix operating systems that lets non-privileged users create their own file systems without editing kernel code. It is now supported on all major desktop OS’ses. In general FUSE volume types have a very good performance.

All FUSE related volume types support additional, custom mount options. Every option must be prefixed with -o when specified, i.e. if you want to specify allow_other, you enter -oallow_other.

FUSE

Requirements: Linux, libfuse3 installed

This volume type binds to the library libfuse3. The library is present on all major linux distributions. By default unlocked vaults are mounted to ~/.local/share/Cryptomator/mnt. Infos about the FUSE custom mount 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.

FUSE-T

Requirements: MacOS, FUSE-T installed

This volume type binds to a library provided by the new FUSE-T project. You can install it via brew:

brew tap macos-fuse-t/homebrew-cask
brew install fuse-t

By default unlocked vaults are mounted to /Volumes. Infos about supported custom options can be found in the wiki of the osxfuse project.

Note

Support for FUSE-T is currently experimental, due to the young age of the project.

WinFsp / WinFsp (Local Drive)

Requirements: Windows, WinFsp installed

This volume type binds to a library provided by the WinFsp project. It is installed along Cryptomator when you are using the EXE installer, otherwise you can download the WinFsp standalone installer here. By default unlocked vaults are mounted to a drive letter, either as a network or a local drive. Infos about supported custom options can be found in the WinFsp repository.

Note

Vaults mounted to a drive letter are only accessible to the current user. If you want to access the vault as a different/elevated user, use either

• the UNC path if using WinFsp (e.g, \\cryptomator-vault\secretFiles for a vault named “secretFiles”),

• or mount to a directory if using WinFsp (Local Drive).

macFUSE

Requirements: macOS, macFUSE installed

This volume type binds to a library provided by the macFUSE project. Due to license restrictions, you have to install it separately. The most recent installer can be found on the macFUSE release page. By default unlocked vaults are mounted to /Volumes. Infos about supported custom options can be found in the macFUSE wiki.

Warning

Apple has deprecated the OS APIs used by macFUSE since macOS 12.3 and made installation difficult. We suggest to try out FUSE-T and only fallback to macFUSE, if problems arise.

Dokany

Warning

With version 1.7.0 Dokany support in Cryptomator is deprecated. We suggest to switch to WinFsp / WinFsp (Local Drive).

Requirements: Windows, Dokany 1.5.1 installed

The Dokan project <https://dokan-dev.github.io/> aims for the same goal as FUSE, but specific for Windows: Provide an interface to create your own filesystem without requiring to write your own kernel filesystem driver. It has to be installed separately, you can download the installer on the Dokany release page. By default unlocked vaults are mounted to a drive letter.