FILE H1 / HOW IT WORKS
Three steps. Then the vault disappears.
Setup takes under two minutes. Once it is done, AppVault is a small icon you tap, draw a pattern into, and use like a regular Photos app — except nothing inside it touches iCloud, Spotlight, or anyone else’s eyes.
UPDATED · 2026-05-16 · REVIEWED BY APPVAULT
- 01
Draw a 5×5 pattern
No password, no email, no account.
On first launch AppVault asks for a 5×5 grid pattern. You draw a path through the dots; the path you draw becomes the input to a PBKDF2-SHA256 key derivation function tuned to 600,000 iterations. The resulting key is wrapped by a hardware key generated inside the iPhone Secure Enclave. Nothing is uploaded. We never see your pattern. Apple never sees your pattern.
- Minimum 6 nodes recommended (over 26 million possible patterns).
- No SMS verification, no email confirmation, no "create account" screen.
- Optional recovery passphrase you can write down and store offline.
- 02
Move files into the vault
Import from Photos, Files, or the camera.
Tap the import button and pick photos, videos, or documents from the iOS Photos picker. AppVault encrypts each file on your device with a fresh AES-256-GCM key and a unique 96-bit nonce, writes the ciphertext to its sandboxed container, and securely overwrites the original in the source album before unlinking it. From the moment import completes, the file no longer exists in your camera roll, in iCloud Photos (unless you opted into encrypted backup), or in Spotlight search.
- Batch import — hundreds of photos in one pass.
- Original-quality preservation; HEIC, JPEG, PNG, MP4, MOV, PDF, and most common formats.
- Source files are overwritten with random bytes before deletion, not just unlinked.
- 03
Lock the app and walk away
Without your pattern the vault is random noise.
Close AppVault. Without the exact pattern, the encrypted container is mathematically indistinguishable from random data — there is no login screen for an attacker to bypass, because there is nothing to log into. Even the catalog (file names, dates, sizes) is encrypted; a forensic examiner cannot see how many files exist or what type they are. The vault is opaque until you draw the right pattern again.
- Optional Face ID or Touch ID convenience unlock after the first pattern of the day.
- Optional Calculator Launcher hides AppVault’s icon entirely.
- Optional Intruder Log records the front camera, time, and approximate location after three failed attempts.
WHAT HAPPENS UNDER THE HOOD
The three seconds between import and "done".
When you tap import, AppVault calls into the iOS Photos framework to read the file bytes into memory. The bytes never touch disk in their plaintext form. AppVault generates a fresh 256-bit file key using Apple’s CryptoKit, derives a 96-bit GCM nonce from the system random source, encrypts the bytes, and writes only the ciphertext to its sandboxed container. The file key is itself wrapped by a master key derived from your pattern, and the wrapped key is written to the catalog — which is then sealed with the master key as a whole.
After the write completes, AppVault asks the Photos framework to delete the original. iOS does this through a user-prompt delete (Apple does not allow apps to silently delete photos), so you confirm the removal once. From that moment, the file lives only as encrypted bytes on your device.
What happens if you close AppVault mid-import?
Each file is encrypted and written atomically. If the app is force-quit mid-import, the files already encrypted are safe in the vault, and the file currently being processed is rolled back. There are no half-encrypted files in the container — that is a deliberate design choice in our crypto pipeline.
What if the device crashes during import?
iOS file-system journaling guarantees that either the encrypted file landed completely or it did not land at all. The catalog is written last, so a crash leaves the file content in the container but invisible until the next clean import re-runs.
GET STARTED
Seal the vault.
Free to download. The first vault is free, forever. Upgrade only when you outgrow it.