iCloud Drive & iOS app.

[Alan Mackey]

   Would Espionage3 work with iCloud Drive? Is there any iOS app in the works or at least in the roadmap? I just need to encrypt some sensitive folders and being able to retrieve their content from my iPhone/iPad.

   Thanks in advance.

[zsolt]

Hello Alan,

We had some brief tests with iCloud Drive and we found it not very reliable, I would rather suggest Dropbox if you want to sync data between two Macs.
But this will be of no use if you want to access the data on your iOS. In that case, we ran some tests with Tresorit, we managed to use Espionage to protect the data on the mac, and Tresorit to protect the data in the cloud, allowing access using iOS devices. If you are interested in details please contact me at taoeffect@macmesupport.com and I will provide you with details.

Rgds
Zsolt

[zsolt]

An update here:

I tested it again upon customer's request and it works OK. The only disadvantage in comparison to some app based (not OS based) cloud services is that the app based are simpler to deactivate, in dropbox there is a "pause syncing" option, in google drive there is a "pause" option, and the one drive app you can simply quit and launch again when you want to resume syncing.

The iCloud drive you cannot pause just enable-disable, in iCloud section of System Preferences, but it is a system wide changes which notifies applications and services about this change, so it is in my opinion more complex then aforementioned apps, and therefore more prone to possible complications.

And I would suggest to disable syncing whenever the folder is unlocked, otherwise the sync service (which ever it is) will continuously update the disk image and there is no need for that as long as you are working with the unlocked folder. So I would disable syncing before I unlock the folder, and enable it again when I lock it.

Anyway, here are the instructions how to import the disk image onto other installation of Espionage, and this is what you will need for all sync services:

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- pick a local folder for protection
- add it to Espionage
- wait until it is done with encryption
- once done, click near the folder name onto small i, and check the disk image name under "Disk image" drop down menu, record it somewhere
- then click on copy password, and paste the disk image password in some text file
- lock the folder and quit espionage
- go to Library/com.taoeffect.espionage3/Data folder, move the disk image you recorded the name of, into some folder in Dropbox/One Drive/Google Drive/iCloud Drive
- launch Espionage, again click on small i near the folder name, you will see that it will complain that the disk image is missing, click on the Disk image drop down menu - "Choose", and select the disk image you moved previously, this should make him happy. Try to unlock, change, lock, just do not rush to fast, allow sync service to sync as you do things... if all OK, lock the folder and we are done with this Mac

- now on the other Mac
- create a local folder which will be used as mount point
- launch Espionage and drag the disk image over it, it will ask you for disk image password and will give you a "choose mount point" menu,
- enter the recorded password, and select the folder you created to be used as mount point
- if all fine the folder will be added to Espionage
- now try to unlock it, update it, lock it.
- again make sure the sync from sync service is done before moving on

- now move to the first mac, unlock the folder and see if the content has the update you did on second mac...

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