EncFS provides an encrypted filesystem in user-space. It runs in userspace, using the FUSE library for the filesystem interface. EncFS is open source software, licensed under the LGPL.

EncFS is now over 10 years old (first release in 2003). It was written because older NFS-based encrypted filesystems such as CFS had not kept pace with Linux development. When FUSE became available, I wrote a CFS replacement for my own use and released the first version to Open Source in 2003.

EncFS encrypts individual files, by translating all requests for the virtual EncFS filesystem into the equivalent encrypted operations on the raw filesystem.

Over the last 10 years, a number of good alternatives have grown up. Computing power has increased to the point where it is reasonable to encrypt the entire filesystem of personal computers (and even mobile phones!). On Linux, ecryptfs provides a nice dynamically mountable encrypted home directory, and is well integrated in distributions I use, such as Ubuntu.

EncFS has been dormant for a while. I've started cleaning up in order to try and provide a better base for a version 2, but whether EncFS flowers again depends upon community interest. In order to make it easier for anyone to contribute, it is moving a new home on Github. So if you're interested in EncFS, please dive in!

GitHub hosting for EncFS is a work in progress. See also the original, and more complete, introduction page at https://www.arg0.net/encfs

The master branch contains the latest stable codebase. This is where bug fixes and improvments should go.

The dev branch contains experimental work, some of which may be back-ported to the master branch when it is stable. The dev branch is not stable, and there is no guarantee of backward compatibility between changes.