Support Extended Permissions on macOS

Author: engaineerCreated Nov 10, 2023Updated Sep 8, 2026
Labelsos:macmisc:filesystemmount:fuse

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Summary

Cryptomator currently does not support extended permissions in macOS and can causes an error message.

Motivation

Some files in macOS have extended permissions.

example: xattr ~/Downloads/Document.pdf com.apple.lastuseddate#PS com.apple.quarantine

These extended permission can cause Cryptomator to raise an exception and fail to move a file when moving a file location within a macOS application such as the PDF viewer Preview that comes with macOS which has opened a PDF file from the Downloads directory then move it through the Preview UI to a Cryptomator vault. This operation is especially important in the user workflow of scanning documents with the macOS native Preview application to a local directory, editing before moving them to a Cryptomator Vault via the Preview application UI.

The error manifests to the user as the message the user does not have permission to access the Cryptomator vault despite the user having the vault mounted and unlocked.

Cryptomator TRACE Log Error: 18:47:47.123 [Thread-23] TRACE o.c.frontend.fuse.ReadOnlyAdapter - getattr /Document.pdf failed, node not found

Error Experiences in UI (which is misleading): Screenshot 2023-11-10 at 6 20 59 pm

Considered Alternatives

The current manual alternative/workaround is to not move files within macOS native applications like Preview but to use the Finder with the file closed.

Workaround workflow is:

  1. Open file from local directory in Preview.
  2. Close file from Preview.
  3. Open Finder, find file and move to Vault.
  4. Open file now stored in Cryptomator Vault again with Preview.
  5. Work on file then close.

Anything else?

No response