# Cryptomator alternative? **URL:** https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/cryptomator-alternative/39201 **Category:** Questions **Created:** 2026-07-17T12:58:55Z **Posts:** 19 ## Post 1 by @Onscreen5341 — 2026-07-17T12:58:55Z I self-host my own Nextcloud inside an encrypted VM on my encrypted Proxmox hosted on a dedicated server from Hetzner. For really sensitive documents (like my obsidian notes) I use cryptomator for E2EE besides the double encryption on-rest. Now I also want to open certain files (like my obsidian vault) also on my smartphone however this is not possible with Cryptomator for android. So I would like to ask if anyone knows an alternative for cryptomator that works for E2EE on cloud providers and lets you encrypt and decrypt files on linux and android. --- ## Post 2 by @Sorge — 2026-07-17T16:50:57Z > Now I also want to open certain files (like my obsidian vault) also on my smartphone however this is not possible with Cryptomator for android. You mean it is impossible to open them in Obsidian app? Because I do almost the same (not with cloud, but with Resilio Sync) and open .md files in Cryptomator’s own txt editor. Works well for casual usage. For using external apps, I did not find a good combination of cloud provider + encryption tool for Android. It seems that for such cases, it is a reasonable thing to simplify things and try cloud providers that also have e2e encryption feature. [Filen.io](http://Filen.io) used to have a nice app that exposes files to external apps, but I did not try it with Obsidian. --- ## Post 3 by @Onscreen5341 — 2026-07-17T17:32:53Z > You mean it is impossible to open them in Obsidian app? Because I do almost the same (not with cloud, but with Resilio Sync) and open .md files in Cryptomator’s own txt editor. Works well for casual usage. I can open normal .md files with a text editor, but you can not use a good system with obsidian just by opening markdown files in a text editor. Also if you use plugins like excalidraw you will get files that are not purely markdown based. --- ## Post 4 by @Sorge — 2026-07-17T18:35:32Z Yes, sure. As they recently finished the freemium version, we can [hope](https://www.reddit.com/r/Cryptomator/comments/1rjt0yh/comment/o9i2rhl/) that getting access to external apps is the next big task. > you can not use a good system with obsidian just by opening markdown files in a text editor. Depends on the use cases. For me it works as mostly I use Obsidian as a md editor. --- ## Post 5 by @byesun — 2026-07-17T23:23:31Z You can use rclone (with the crypt remote) through RSAF (or RoundSync, although the rclone version it uses is outdated, and it’s pretty buggy from what I remember) or gocryptfs/CryFS through DroidFS on Android. If using the latter, you need to use the Nextcloud app or RSAF or something similar to provide access to your Nextcloud instance through SAF. There’s also Arcanum, which uses VeraCrypt (and thus requires downloading the entire vault before use), but I haven’t looked into it much. --- ## Post 6 by @Onscreen5341 — 2026-07-18T08:09:50Z > You can use rclone (with the crypt remote) through RSAF (or RoundSync, although the rclone version it uses is outdated, and it’s pretty buggy from what I remember) or gocryptfs/CryFS through DroidFS on Android. RClone itself just copies data to a remove destination. I know that they have an encryption option, but can this even compare with Cryptomator? > If using the latter, you need to use the Nextcloud app or RSAF or something similar to provide access to your Nextcloud instance through SAF. Not possible. The Nextcloud App has a bug since years that stops syncing sub-folders. For example you set the “encrypted” to sync on your mobile device than this happens: - Documents - encrypted (set to sync) - 1 (sync) - 1.1 (does not sync) - 1.2 (does not sync) - 2 (sync) - 2.1 (does not sync) - 2.2 (does not sync) - Photos --- ## Post 7 by @byesun — 2026-07-18T08:45:19Z > [@Onscreen5341](#): > > RClone itself just copies data to a remove destination. I know that they have an encryption option, but can this even compare with Cryptomator? Rclone is significantly more versatile than Cryptomator, given that it supports directly copying to and from remotes, mounting remotes, syncing remotes, etc. with various different settings. RSAF presents the remote as a SAF provider, which I expect you’d just point Obsidian towards. > [@Onscreen5341](#): > > Not possible. The Nextcloud App has a bug since years that stops syncing sub-folders. Then just use RSAF instead of the Nextcloud app. Or use some other app that can expose WebDAV as a SAF provider, since a cursory search indicates Nextcloud supports WebDAV. --- ## Post 8 by @yolakalemowa — 2026-07-18T09:03:04Z > [@Onscreen5341](#): > > I self-host my own Nextcloud inside an encrypted VM on my encrypted Proxmox hosted on a dedicated server from Hetzner. this might be an unrelated question but what would it take for me to begin to understand these things and then actually try to do the same for my home :') a PhD in self-hosting? --- ## Post 9 by @Onscreen5341 — 2026-07-18T09:21:14Z > this might be an unrelated question but what would it take for me to begin to understand these things and then actually try to do the same for my home :') a PhD in self-hosting? DO IT … Just get any computer you have or rent a VPS and do whatever you want. Do you want to self-host a VPN on the VPS? Go to YouTube and search for tutorials. More of a reader? Then search in your search engine for tutorials? Learning by doing and after enough time you will have a good set of knowledge. The only thing I can recommend do not host anything sensitive or important for the first years and only do it after you learned enough, --- ## Post 10 by @yolakalemowa — 2026-07-18T09:29:56Z the dream is to self host: my own blog, [FMD](https://fmd-foss.org), peertube instance, and more complicated and sensitive stuff like Ente Photos, and home security cameras if possible and be able to access them remotely (through SSH I think?). I’m soon retiring my MSI GP72 2QE laptop after like 10 years of service and getting a new laptop. So that would be good to do those things right? --- ## Post 11 by @Onscreen5341 — 2026-07-18T09:38:39Z > the dream is to self host: my own blog, I heard that Hugo is good and if really want to dice into DIY you can write a website yourself with HTML, CSS an a bit of JS. It is really not hard to learn how to write a blog in HTML. Just do yourself a favor and avoid WordPress and be aware that as soon as you publish your blog or website you need a privacy policy. > [FMD](https://fmd-foss.org/), Never heard of it, however I would wait and definitely start not with it. If an potential threat actor would gain access to this it can turn into a nightmare. > peertube instance, Go for it. > , and more complicated and sensitive stuff like Ente Photos, and home security cameras if possible and be able to access them remotely (through SSH I think?). Ente Photos is E2EE, so the potential threat of an attacker gains access to the data is low, however if you loose your data through a mistake (rm -rf / … ) you might lose data. I have the same opinion for security cameras as for FMD. But if you want to start easy you might go to self-hosted Ubiquity cameras expensive, but easier and self-hostable without a cloud. > I’m soon retiring my MSI GP72 2QE laptop after like 10 years of service and getting a new laptop. So that would be good to do those things right? For many things it will work, however if you want to publish things like a blog post for the beginning I would advise you to rent a KVM/VPS from a provider. Maybe rent a small Cloud server (VPS) from Hetzner for the website and the laptop for other things. --- ## Post 12 by @yolakalemowa — 2026-07-18T09:41:14Z much appreciated!!! I’ll look into that. Sorry for derailing the thread. Will take it from here. --- ## Post 13 by @Sorge — 2026-07-18T15:26:42Z > [@byesun](#): > > Rclone is significantly more versatile than Cryptomator, given that it supports directly copying to and from remotes, mounting remotes, syncing remotes, etc. with various different settings. I’m not sure I agree with this comparison. 1. Cryptomator on Android also natively supports S3, WebDAV, Google Drive, etc. And on desktop it doesn’t make much sense anyway, since there are better options for deskop. 2. Personally I prefer encryption that’s implemented across all platforms by the same team. I’m not sure that’s the case for rclone — and I just don’t know enough about the encryption implementation in RSAF. 3. After all the Syncthing on Android drama, I’m tired of tracking small projects that depend on a single person. RSAF doesn’t have the same weird maintainers history as Syncthing, but it might — the current maintainer[doesn’t plan](https://github.com/chenxiaolong/RSAF/issues/189) to follow the new Google policy. I respect any dev’s opinion, but I also respect Cryptomator for trying to keep their app accessible on all platforms, despite the silly issues they’ve already had with Google’s policies 4. Last but not least, I’d check how both Cryptomator and RSAF handle sync conflicts. I haven’t used rclone in years, but back then I had more sync issues with it than with Cryptomator. --- ## Post 14 by @byesun — 2026-07-18T23:38:47Z > [@Sorge](#): > > 1. Cryptomator on Android also natively supports S3, WebDAV, Google Drive, etc. And on desktop it doesn’t make much sense anyway, since there are better options for deskop. > 2. Personally I prefer encryption that’s implemented across all platforms by the same team. I’m not sure that’s the case for rclone — and I just don’t know enough about the encryption implementation in RSAF. Rclone supports those natively as well. It in fact supports far, far more services than Cryptomator does natively. The encryption is a single remote used across all platforms. > [@Sorge](#): > > 1. Last but not least, I’d check how both Cryptomator and RSAF handle sync conflicts. I haven’t used rclone in years, but back then I had more sync issues with it than with Cryptomator. This entirely depends on how you’ve configured the remotes. --- ## Post 15 by @Torsten — 2026-07-18T23:59:55Z For this specific use case… why not use NextClouds own E2EE extension? Otherwise gocryptfs, encfs or cryfs all have no audits or failed audits which is not great. Apparently it is quite complex to encrypt data securely while not changing everything all the time (like luks or veracrypt) and having an attacker with constant read access to the changing encrypted data --- ## Post 16 by @byesun — 2026-07-19T00:35:50Z From what I’ve heard, the E2EE extension is pretty buggy and has caused corruption before. --- ## Post 17 by @Sorge — 2026-07-19T05:38:13Z > Rclone supports those natively as well Obviously, I didn’t say Rclone can’t do this — I was responding to this: > Rclone is significantly more versatile than Cryptomator, given that it supports directly copying to and from remotes Anyway, sadly it turns out that neither RSAF nor Filen are going to work for Obsidian on Android. [GitHub issue](https://github.com/chenxiaolong/RSAF/issues/298), [discussion with some details](https://community.cryptomator.org/t/using-cryptomator-with-obsidian-syncthing-files-still-visible-after-lock/17061/5) and workaround with native obsidian plugins. For me that sounds like a reason to use Syncthing/Resilio/SFTP for this kind of thing — clouds complicate things a lot when you can just avoid the need for encryption by avoiding clouds altogether for this content. --- ## Post 18 by @byesun — 2026-07-19T06:06:02Z > [@Sorge](#): > > Obviously, I didn’t say Rclone can’t do this — I was responding to this: > > > Rclone is significantly more versatile than Cryptomator, given that it supports directly copying to and from remotes I’m not sure how that was really a response to that, since supporting something like six options isn’t particularly versatile in comparison. Not to mention that when I was talking about directly copying to and from remotes, I was talking about stuff like directly using `rclone copy`. > [@Sorge](#): > > Anyway, sadly it turns out that neither RSAF nor Filen are going to work for Obsidian on Android. [GitHub issue](https://github.com/chenxiaolong/RSAF/issues/298), [discussion with some details](https://community.cryptomator.org/t/using-cryptomator-with-obsidian-syncthing-files-still-visible-after-lock/17061/5) and workaround with native obsidian plugins. > > For me that sounds like a reason to use Syncthing/Resilio/SFTP for this kind of thing — clouds complicate things a lot when you can just avoid the need for encryption by avoiding clouds altogether for this content. I’m not sure how Nextcloud behaves if you just plop files down (not sure if it has a DB that it needs to keep in sync for the drive), but if it works fine, then Syncthing or something similar would be easy enough to setup, yeah. Given that it sounds like SAF storage causes problems, another option would be to use something like FolderSync or S3Drive to handle syncing between your local storage (which you point Obsidian towards) and either a SAF provider or some remote. Not sure if there are open-source options for this sort of thing (I haven’t found any at least other than RoundSync). --- ## Post 19 by @Onscreen5341 — 2026-07-19T09:46:59Z > [@Torsten](#): > > For this specific use case… why not use NextClouds own E2EE extension? Because this so called “Production-ready” E2EE is everything, but not stable, production ready, reliable or functional. If you use it some client can decrypt the data, some can only encrypt and not decrypt, some files will get corrupted and some users might even be locked out of their account. I ranted back then on Techlore ([Nextcloud E2EE? - Get Advice - Techlore Forum](https://discuss.techlore.tech/t/nextcloud-e2ee/)). It did not get better.