Thoughts on encryption

[h-2]

I don't understand how encrypted notes work at the moment. It seems that you can never edit an encrypted note again without removing the encryption¹. Is that correct? This is not very useful.

I am not a crypto expert, but wouldn't something like this work:

1. For every user, create a key-pair; encrypt the private key with a password and a salt.
2. When an encrypted note is accessed, the user's client receives the encrypted private key, public key and salt.
3. They are prompted to provide the password which will locally decrypt the private key which is then used to provide the text of the note. The decrypted key can remain accessible for the session or a specific time.
4. When they save the note (or auto-save happens), the note is encrypted with the public key and sent to the server and stored.

→ Similar workflow to regular notes; full edits; just one additional ask for the "encryption password".

Another benefit of this design is easy shared encryption: simply use the public keys of all users that shall have access. No need for knowing the other persons password or private key; i.e. each user can use their own password to access the note.

What do you think?

¹ I find "decrypt" a bit misleading as a word, because what it actually means is "remove encryption". I don't think anybody ever wants to "remove encryption" of an encrypted note. IMHO, this should not be offered so easily, it should be an "advanced feature" and marked red and with a ⚠️ , similar to "delete".

[fccview]

Hey,
Editing notes doesn't decrypt them, the server sees them encrypted and the client sees them decrypted :)

Unless you manually decrypt a note by clicking on the "decrypt" option from there menu the server will see encrypted content

Hope this clarifies things a little!

P.s. there's two encryption methods you can use, pgp or xchacha, neither allow you to store the password in state so it'll always prompt you for a password

[h-2]

Ah, OK. That's surprising. First I see this:

I could click on "decrypt", but then it seems like this actually removes the encryption which is not something you usually want.

So I might click on "view", and then it says:

This very clearly tells me that I won't be able to edit the note, or not? This is confusing 😵‍💫

I did that and only now realised, there is this small button:

Which doesn't look like an "edit" button at all, but which apparently does allow me to edit the note! 😀

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So, it seems, I was not requesting a new feature, just a more intuitive UI/UX!!

I would maybe kindly suggest the following:

1. Remove the initial dialogue and all buttons shown above, and instead directly show the following in place of the message body:

2. Use the same icon for "edit message" as for regular notes (or something very similar with the well-known pencil 📝 which everyone recognises as "edit").
3. Rename "Decrypt" in … menu to "Remove encryption" and also mark it red.

Thank you in any case!

[fccview]

That's all very valid, I'll look into making the whole journey a bit more user friendly!

[h-2]

Just one thing I realised but hadn't mentioned: Often, when colour-coding buttons in UIs, the colour is used to emphasize the "suggested" or "default" choice. You use this pattern yourself by colouring the currently selected note as purple, and highlighting the "new note" button as purple. This makes it especially strange to have the "decrypt" button be purple here. It clearly shouldn't be the default.