Vault9 asks for no account and no email. You pick a pattern or a passphrase, and you can import photos right away. The one real chore is the Emergency Kit, and it waits for you in the Gallery.
Setup takes four steps
- Choose how you unlock. Draw a pattern on a 6 × 6 grid, or type a passphrase. A strength meter rates your choice, and the app rejects very common ones.
- Create the vault. The app opens the Gallery. Tap Import and add photos right away.
- Make your Emergency Kit. Your iPhone creates a Secret Key (a random code you never need to remember) and puts it on a one-page PDF. Save or print it, then show the app that you can read it.
- Write your pattern or passphrase on the kit by hand. The app never prints it for you.
Until step 3 is done, the Gallery shows a banner that you cannot close. The app also reminds you, at most 2 times.
The kit is the cost of having no reset
Vault9 has no servers of its own, so we cannot reset your pattern or passphrase. We have no email reset and no support back door. The kit is how you keep that job yourself. If you forget your pattern and it is not on the kit, the vault is lost. We cannot open it for you (what you can still try).
So do step 4 while you hold the kit, not later. A forgotten pattern that is not on the kit cannot be fixed.
Keep the kit on paper in a very safe place, in a password manager, or on another device that uses a different iCloud account. Do not keep it in iCloud, Notes, Passwords or the vault. Settings has a kit test, and the app reminds you to run it 3 months after the last one.
Daily use
You add items from the Photos app or the Files app. Vault9 never changes your Photos library, so the originals stay there until you delete them, and then once more in Recently Deleted. The camera in Vault9 skips this, because its captures never reach Photos.
Albums sort your items. An export goes through the iOS share sheet.
The vault locks when the app goes to the background, and after 5 minutes without a touch (you can change this in Settings). In the app switcher, you see a plain cover with the logo, not your photos.
Face ID or Touch ID is optional and off by default. With it on, the app still asks for your pattern or passphrase after 3 days without one. Your phone passcode never opens the vault.
On a new iPhone, the app asks for the Secret Key from your kit one time. The iCloud backup brings the vault over.
