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Work With Files
We focus on designing Boxcryptor as user-friendly and easy to use as possible. Once Boxcryptor is set up, you will not notice that your files are encrypted. Just keep working with your files as usual.
On-the-fly Encryption
Boxcryptor encrypts your data on-the-fly and it encrypts every file separately. When you work with your files there is no need for bulk decryption. You can just open any encrypted file and it's content will be decrypted automatically in the background. When you save your changes, the contents are encrypted automatically again. Simply work with your protected data with Boxcryptor without noticing the cryptographic process behind it.
We decrypt and encrypt your files on demand: Do you want to view your content? Just double click on it and we download and decrypt your file for you. Are you finished with writing your essay? Just store it locally and upload it with Boxcryptor Portable. It will encrypt the file and store it into the cloud.
Encryption and Permission Hierarchy
You can decide for every file or folder which security level you want to set. Boxcryptor gives you full control over this. You can allow others to access a file by giving permissions, you can choose if the filename should be encrypted as well, or you can leave single files and folders unencrypted.
To make things easier all properties of a file are inherited hierarchically from its containing folder. For example, if you have an encrypted folder called My Secret Files and add a file to this, the file will be encrypted automatically and the chosen permissions will be inherited. The same applies to whole folders.
Encrypted and permission to access for Alice
Encrypted and permission to access for Bob
Encrypted and permission to access for Alice and Bob
Note: If you add a file to a folder that is not encrypted, Boxcryptor will ask you if you want to encrypt it or not.
Work With Your Files
With Boxcryptor, you never need to manually decrypt any data when you want to work with it.
Boxcryptor Portable app is a general-purpose file browser, just like the Windows Explorer or the Finder. You can browse into folders or open files by double clicking on them. Boxcryptor will automatically download and decrypt files for you. All available operations can be triggered by right-clicking a file or folder. Besides basic functions, such as copy, cut, paste, rename or delete, Boxcryptor allows you to mark a file as a favorite. You can select multiple files and folders by holding down Shift on your keyboard
All files marked as favorite can be easily access via the Favorites entry in the sidebar.
The Activities page displays all files which have been changed recently.
There are some limitations for editing files in Boxcryptor Portable. For more information, click here.
How to Recognize Encrypted Files
Boxcryptor allows you to have encrypted and unencrypted files and folders. Encrypted files or folders are marked with badge icons. Before creating new files or directories, you can decide whether these items should be encrypted or not.
encrypted
Encrypt Existing Files and Folders
If you already have files stored in your cloud, you can encrypt your existing files as well. This is how it works:
- Open Boxcryptor Portable.
- Browse to the file or folder you want to encrypt.
- Right-click the selection and choose Boxcryptor → Encrypt in the context menu.
Note: To improve synchronization results, Boxcryptor adds an _encrypted suffix to the names of the files and folders you encrypt. After synchronization is completed, you can rename them.
Work With Filename Encryption
Filename encryption effectively prevents outsiders from analyzing your data structure. However, it also comes with the cost of a slightly slower performance and higher efforts regarding a proper setup. If you want to use filename encryption with shared files and folders, please read our blogpost, especially chapter 5, before proceeding.
A filename encrypted file will look like this: 怐悰挦抱沯抮殥枏曕擟敯漢怏搬濂檬浉楻挭抧柜欅䀣.bc
Filename encryption can be enabled globally. All new encrypted items that do not inherit encryption settings from their parent folders will be encrypted with filename encryption. Existing encrypted files, however, will not be touched, which means that you have to activate filename encryption for existing files manually. Filename encryption is one of the properties that files inherit from their parent folder. Therefore, if you save a file to a folder with filename encryption, it will have filename encryption as well.
Conclusively, even if filename encryption is enabled globally, new files that are created in a folder without filename encryption will also have no filename encryption due to the encryption property inheritance.
To activate filename encryption globally, go to Settings → Advanced Settings → and check Enable filename encryption.
Existing files without filename encryption will remain unchanged. Please use one of our desktop clients to activate filename encryption for your existing files.
How to Decrypt Files
You do not need to decrypt your files when working with Boxcryptor.
If there is a scenario in which you want to decrypt a file, here are some possibilities:
- If you want the decrypted files synced to your cloud provider, the easiest way is to right-click on the file or folder you want to decrypt and select Decrypt.
- If you want to copy or move your files to another location in decrypted mode, just select the files in Boxcryptor Portable and Export them to the new location. Everything will be downloaded and saved unencrypted to the target location.