End-to-End Encryption

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Nextcloud 31
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Nextcloud GmbH

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  • nextcloud_release_service
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2 weeks, 1 day ago

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Provides the necessary endpoint to enable end-to-end encryption.

Releases

Nextcloud version Stable channel Nightly channel All releases
31 1.17.0-beta.3 (Unstable) 31
30 1.16.2 - 30
29 1.15.2 - 29
28 1.14.5 - 28
27 1.13.2 - 27
26 1.12.5 - 26
25 1.11.4 - 25
24 1.10.3 - 24
23 1.9.1 - 23
22 1.8.1 - 22
21 1.7.2 - 21
20 1.6.4 - 20
19 1.5.3 - 19
18 1.4.0 - 18
17 1.3.0 - 17
16 1.2.0 - 16
15 1.1.0 - 15
14 1.0.5 - 14
13 1.0.5 - 13

Comments

Roman
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1 year, 7 months ago

Cannot edit files with this application.

Anonymous
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1 year, 8 months ago

I originally was drawn to nextcloud for the same reasons that 77 64 mentioned about not wanting to use Google or other mainstream cloud services, I wanted to be in control of my own data. At first, I though maybe I was doing something wrong while setting up the E2EE as it would do the same as others have mentioned and get errors while syncing, files would not be able to be deleted, and versioning was no longer working properly. After multiple system wipes and re-installs of nextcloud I found that the E2EE app is just not reliable to implement. I love nextcloud and use it everyday still.

Joshua Pettus
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1 year, 9 months ago

This is a very, very misunderstood app... For starters, most development isn't in this server plug-in but in the end clients themselves (IE. desktop, ios, and android apps). So ignore bad rating on the lack of development grounds. They have been working on it quite a bit.

Regarding Jordan Lees's issue. I noticed the same thing with desktop client 3.8.0. That seems to have been fixed with 3.8.1. At least that is my experience.

They have certainly made a lot of good progress over the years, but I would still characterize as beta grade on the grounds that sometimes it can break as just happened with Jordan Lees. This is definitely a legitimate criticism for something that has been advertised multiple times as being ready for production. That said, even if it was fully tested and used, it will always be potentially dangerous! I would still beware if you do your backups at the server level (like me). Backups of encrypted files are not the most useful. Have some other solution. There really isn't a good mechanism to recover if something were to happen and you needed to recover your NC database (ask me how I know). LESSON: the passphrase itself is not the encryption or decryption key, but the key for those keys.

Regarding not being able to access encrypted files on the server - That's the whole point! If what you really are looking for is storage level encryption. I would look into Linux luks outside of NC. This is file level, and it has its own benefits and pitfalls. It very well may not be the right tool for your situation.

UPDATE 3/18/24

A little bit ago, they updated the app on NC28, but in doing so, it messes up the internal encryption keys. Suddenly the clients can't decrypt the existing data even with the correct mnemonic, requiring me to to setup the whole thing from scratch again using my backup data. This is what I mean by beta grade. Yes it works as advertised, but any minor changes they make can have huge consequences for users (Backup, backup, backup). And they seem to have no qualms about making such changes. This doesn't effect my rating, but know what it is!

Jordan Lees
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1 year, 9 months ago

End to end encrypt in Nextcloud is ridiculously unstable. Every time I attempt to add files to an encrypted folder, something goes wrong and it messes up the sync. I've been unable to successfully add more than 3 files to an encrypted folder before I start to get errors.

Lukas Oertel
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1 year, 11 months ago

Works great. Despite the Desktop Client seems to sync more often for no reason, everything is working great.

PS: This app is not intended to work in the browser. You need the apps on {Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS} to configure and use E2E-Encryption.

Anonymous
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2 years ago

I tried to use this app quiet a long time, but it does not get better. Sometimes files in an encrypted folder can't be changed, deleted or downloaded for no obvious reason.

Karl Emil Nikka
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2 years ago

I’ve given up on this app for its original purpose. The app is far from stable, causing multiple sync errors. It also breaks versioning, even for files that aren’t end-to-end encrypted. Many of the features that were marketed as existing back in 2020 (archive link), are still missing. Most importantly, you cannot share end-to-end encrypted files. These features are now called roadmap features that are under constant development, which unfortunately isn’t true. They aren’t worked on due to lack of customer demand.

However, when the app is stable and the bugs are addressed, it will probably become a good app for end-to-end encrypting selected personal files.

a a
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2 years, 1 month ago

I am not sure where all of these comments are coming from. The app may not be as plug and play as most others, but setup instructions on the client-side are quite clear.

I have been using it for over 2 years without any issues on both desktop (with and without virtual drive) and iOS. The only downside is that compatibility updates to a new Nextcloud version may arrive a month or so later, but I don’t really see it as a deal breaker.

77 64
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2 years, 1 month ago

I literally migrated to Nextcloud in large part due to this app. Do not get me wrong, I like NC and I use some of its other apps on a daily basis. Yet, one of the reasons to move away from Google was to have my own data and these days, at least on the cloud, e2e is the way to go. Silly me, for falling for it.

Once I began looking at the Github and the ins-and-outs of the app, I realized that albeit it was highly advertised on the NC site as a mature, if not at least usable product that it is in fact, far more akin to a half-baked, Alpha demo. If you read through the community and Github you will notice many people have lost data due to it. The main solution for the time being is to simply not use it.

Despite the app being bad, which can cause data loss, the worst offender here is really the manner it was hyped and sold as a mature product to unsuspecting users. Perhaps the main reason why you are likely to see people really dump on it. Akin the social app and whiteboard app. Both of which got a fair amount fanfare but then support seemingly stalled or was dropped, leaving a half-working app at best, in its wake.

Anonymous
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2 years, 1 month ago

Regarding state of this app, see this thread.

To conclude - still immature, with lot of problems (see issues and complaint on forum for it) and unfortunately not priority, as there is not enough developers available to cover also this.

khinch
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2 years, 4 months ago

Hopeless. In Nextcloud 24 it's still no better than all the previous comment say. Sync gets stuck or folder gets into a loop. There is a bug on the github page that's been open for years for the sync failures and the official workaround is to disable e2e. This app really should not be in the featured list.

Goethe G
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2 years, 9 months ago

At some point Nextcloud stopped advertising the end-to-end-encryptio. But you were advertisig that before.

Cluelessdev
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2 years, 9 months ago

For the users that are debating getting this after 1.9.1: Nope, it's still awful. The update (After the continued radio silence of E2EE) didn't fix anything but the inability to install the same mess on NC23. I wouldn't even call this app half-baked on 23, I'd call it the batter.

Uploads are totally broken from Mac clients, I couldn't get it working on my Windows VM, and iOS uploads actually send you into an endless error loop spiral of death. Apparently some people had luck with older NC versions, but of course that would mean giving up the substantial sync speed boosts, improvements, and bug fixes that came with v23.

Nothing but respect for the volunteer contributors and peer reviewers, however. The app is just in an extremely poor position to be marketed as Nextcloud's biggest selling points, that's all.

Laurent
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2 years, 10 months ago

It's a pity that such an important app is so broken. As far as I can see it's pretty much abandonware too since it seems there hasn't been any major development since October 2020 (recent commits are just nextcloud-bot updating translations, and a few config files).

Anonymous
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3 years, 1 month ago

Very bad. I had to constantly recreate folders and copy data, but the app usually gets stuck somehow. I'd open a github issue but I see nothing in nextcloud's or nginx's logs. I just gave up.

Besides bugs that I 've encountered, you don't even have basic functions like copying between encrypted and unencrypted folders. Encrypted folders also can't rezide on external shares.

Normally I wouldn't get upset with something like this, since I'm able to use a free open-source file hosting/syncing app, but it's very disingenuous to have this app featured and marketed as a strength on the website when it's in such a bad, crappy alpha state. They've launched this for over a year, maybe 2?

Anonymous
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3 years, 7 months ago

I don't know why I didn't take all the previous bad comments seriously. I almost lost some of my most important data with this broken horrible app that should not be publicly available.

At first everything seemed to be working fine. But after a few weeks the desktop client suddenly had issues syncing. As I couldn't solve the sync issue, I decided to completely log out from my nextcloud desktop client an then log back in and see if file syncing would work again.

What I've found instead is that now nextcloud couldn't sync my encrypted folder anymore. The client didn't ask me for a mnemonic or anything. It just couldn't sync the encrypted files anymore. I was extremly lucky, that I had all the files in unencrypted form on my desktop computer. I just deleted the encrypted folder and then I deleted this app.

Don't use the app unless you want to risk losing your data. Don't trust any nextcloud blogpost saying that this feature is now "stable" or something. It's not.

Cody
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3 years, 9 months ago

Glad I have only been testing this in the non-production environment. Countless corrupted files, broken syncs and now this app has not been updated to NC 21. My non-prod environment told me 20.0.9 was available, but it updated to 21.0.1 instead and this plugin did not work anymore. Not fun, hope people aren't using this in production!

gwbasic
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3 years, 10 months ago

What a bad app. Where is the passphrase place, the nextcloud app (Client) wants to know this!

See here: https://ibb.co/ZHLpGcL

Jerry Adrian
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3 years, 10 months ago

I can't delete encrypted folder if I have sub folder, this app still unstable. https://github.com/nextcloud/end_to_end_encryption/issues/197

Now I'm using Cryptomator to encrypt my files, I still can edit file on my android phone.

Anonymous
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4 years ago

Useless until the sync issue is fixed. Very frustrating, would not recommend using the app right now.

Philipp Hasper
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4 years ago

Do not use this app right now. After having uploaded the first couple of e2e-encrypted files, your desktop client won't be able to synchronize anything anymore: https://github.com/nextcloud/desktop/issues/2593 .

Disable the application, restart the client and syncing works again.

Apart from this synchronization show-stopper, the app seems to do the job.

David Hildenbrand
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4 years, 1 month ago

This app breaks syncing NC v20.x with v3.x clients. The server load explodes and syncing no longer works. Took me hours to identify that e2ee is completely broken after upgrading to NC v20. Do yourself a favor and stay away from this prototype-quality piece of software.

M Foster
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4 years, 7 months ago

This is in an Alpha state, yet your Marketing materials advertise it as an available feature? If you're going after the enterprise market, you better have solutions that actually exist, not just on paper.

Loic Dachary
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6 years, 1 month ago

It's the only way to get real privacy: trust noone!

Aproposnix
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6 years, 9 months ago

Waiting for NC 14 where I hope they work out the issues.