Failure checking encryption consistency

[karton]

Hi guys, thanks for this amazing software!

My use case:

I have an Obsidian folder (folder with .md files) with sensitive data on my windows 10 computer that i would like to sync (send/receive) with my android 10 phone.

Ideally, both the folders on my windows and android should be encrypted until i decide i want to access files in them, by unencrypting the folder with my password.

I’ve added my UNTRUSTED android phone to the device list and shared a test folder of type Send & Receive (Both folder types android & PC are Send & Receive), but when i accept the shared folder on my android device i get the following error message on my pc:

Failure checking encryption consistency with device ONEPLUS 6T for folder “Test Folder” (test-xxxx-xxxx): remote expects to exchange plain data, but local data is encrypted (folder-type receive-encrypted)

Sharing plain data folders works fine without problem.

I don’t know what i am doing wrong, i tried a lot of things already. Maybe I am understanding something wrong?

Thank you in advance!

[tomasz86]

You need to set a password for the folder on the PC when sharing it with the Android phone.

@karton

Ideally, both the folders on my windows and android should be encrypted until i decide i want to access files in them, by unencrypting the folder with my password.

While technically possible, you do understand that Syncthing has no built-in capability to do this on the fly, right? You can decrypt using the command line, but running the CLI commands on Android isn’t exactly going to be the best experience. Of course, this can be done using ADB or a terminal emulator, but still .

[karton]

@tomasz86

You need to set a password for the folder on the PC when sharing it with the Android phone.

Do you mean that i need to encrpyt the folder myself with Windows Explorer like so:

Or do you mean that i need to set encrpytion password when creating a folder in syncthing like so:

[tomasz86]

The latter. You need to set the password in Syncthing. Please do not touch that checkbox in Windows unless you know exactly what you’re doing, as otherwise you will end up encrypting the data linking it to your specific Windows user account.

[karton]

@tomasz86

While technically possible, you do understand that Syncthing has no built-in capability to do this on the fly, right? You can decrypt using the command line, but running the CLI commands on Android isn’t exactly going to be the best experience. Of course, this can be done using ADB or a terminal emulator, but still .

That’s too bad! I was hoping syncthing had this feature builtin, otherwise i can’t figure out why the untrusted deive encryption password is used for?

I’ll probably be able to decrypt the folder on my android phone with Tasker and Termux if needed, but makes everything myuch more complex.

[karton]

I don’t get the option to fill in a password on the android app tho, might this be the problem?

[tomasz86]

The password is used for encrypting the data that is send to that specific device. You can use it later for decryption (e.g. locally using the CLI, or when syncing the data to yet another device from the untrusted one).

@karton

I don’t get the option to fill in a password on the android app tho, might this be the problem?

On Android, you probably have to use the Web GUI (available in the left slide-out menu) instead of the app interface.

[karton]

@tomasz86

On Android, you probably have to use the Web GUI (available in the left slide-out menu) instead of the app interface.

Yeah, you’ll definitly want to use the Web GUI, as the app is quite limited. This only brought up more problems.

SyncThing is probably not the right tool for my use case. Altough it would be nice because I open-source. Unfortunately I have exams right now so I don’t really have time to fiddle around with this software.

I’ll probably use something like cryptomator and onedrive or dropbox for the meantime.

Thanks tho!