4. WebDAV Mounts

4.1. What is a WebDAV mount?

A WebDAV mount allows you to work with remote folders and files of a WebDAV server. You can “mount” the WebDAV server in DAVx⁵ and then use

  • a file manager app to manage your files,

  • any app that supports remote files to access your files (like sending a document directly from your WebDAV server over email, or watch a video from your WebDAV server).

4.2. Server requirements

WebDAV mounts should work with any compliant WebDAV server.

When using HTTP/1.1, DAVx⁵ uses chunked transfer encoding for PUT requests because it doesn’t know the file size in advance. This requires some servers to be configured for request buffering. Otherwise resulting files may always have 0 bytes or a 411 Length Required error is returned. Using HTTP/2 may avoid this. sabre/dav recommends to use Apache with mod_php (not FastCGI) or a recent version of nginx and to avoid Lighttpd.

4.3. Restrictions

Note

You can only use DAVx⁵ WebDAV mounts with file managers that support Android’s Storage Access Framework (SAF).

At the moment, these file managers are known to work well:

  • AOSP File Manager (default in many custom ROMs like LineageOS)

  • Material Files

  • Total Commander (choose “Add Custom Location” → open side drawer → Choose the DAVx5 mount). Hint: you need to reload / swipe down and refresh the folder if it appears to be empty.

  • fx File Exporer (top right menu: “Connect to Storage” → open side drawer → Choose the DAVx5 mount)

Also, not all apps support content from remote files (SAF). If you can’t open a WebDAV file with a specific app, chances are high that

  1. the app doesn’t support remote files at all,

  2. or the app opens the file in read/write mode (which is currently not supported by WebDAV/DAVx⁵).

Warning

If you’re transferring or accessing big files (like streaming a video), Android may kill DAVx⁵ because it uses the CPU in the background. In this case, enable the DAVx⁵ setting Keep in foreground to avoid DAVx⁵ to be killed.

4.4. Managing WebDAV mounts

Added in version 4.0.

  1. Open DAVx⁵ and select Tools / WebDAV mounts in the navigation drawer.

  2. The WebDAV mounts activity appears.

  3. In this activity, you can

  • add new mounts,

  • view your existing mounts together with some information (URL and quota, if available),

  • share content from your mounts (see below),

  • unmount existing mounts.

To add a mount, enter a display name (the name for the mount that will appear in Android UI), the WebDAV URL and optionally user name and password. Then select Mount. DAVx⁵ will check whether there is a WebDAV service at the given URL and then mount it.

4.5. How to access files with a file manager

The workflow is different between file managers that are a system package (like AOSP File Manager) and file managers that are installed as normal apps.

4.5.1. Pre-installed file managers

File managers that are pre-installed system packages have direct access to SAF. When the file manager supports SAF, you can directly browse into DAVx⁵ WebDAV mounts (usually in the navigation drawer).

4.5.2. Manually installed file managers

Manually installed file managers (like Material Files) don’t have the permission to access SAF mounts automatically. So you have to

  1. add an external mount,

  2. then select the respective DAVx⁵ mount in the directory chooser (usually in the navigation drawer), and

  3. confirm the location (“Use this directory as root directory”).

  4. Then you can use the DAVx⁵ mount in the file manager.

4.6. How to access files from DAVx⁵

If you can’t install a file manager or if you only want to share files from your WebDAV mount, you can use the Share content button in the DAVx⁵ WebDAV mounts:

  1. Use the Share content button.

  2. Now there is a little workaround to view files without installing a file manager: next to each file that can be opened there’s a small open symbol (a bit like this: ✢). Hit this symbol to view the file directly.

  3. If you select a file, it can be shared with apps directly.

4.7. How to create backups with Seedvault

You can use Seedvault to create system backups with WebDAV storage over DAVx⁵:

  1. Add a WebDAV mount in DAVx⁵.

  2. Launch Seedvault, and press the “Choose where to store backups” option.

  3. Your WebDAV mount from DAVx⁵ will be shown automatically. Select it.

  4. Wait until the configuration process completed.

  5. Now you can configure your backup, which will be created at the root of your WebDAV mount.