Vault9 needs no account. There is no email and no sign-up, and Vault9 has no servers of its own. But the vault is not only on your iPhone. The iCloud backup saves an encrypted copy to your own iCloud storage.
What you give up without an account
There is no password reset by email, because there is no email. Vault9 the company never receives your photos or your keys. The phone encrypts the vault before it stores anything. The vault opens with your pattern or passphrase and your Secret Key, or Face ID if you turn it on.
One more fact, so that “no account” does not mislead you. The app sends usage statistics to PostHog EU, and this is on by default. It never sends your photos or your secrets. Turn it off in Settings, Privacy, Share usage statistics.
The iCloud backup is the only other copy
The backup sits in your iCloud storage and never contains the Secret Key. You need the Secret Key and your pattern or passphrase to open it. It is a backup, not sync, and only one iPhone, the active iPhone, saves to it.
Vault9 keeps the vault out of your normal iPhone backup and out of Quick Start. So if the vault is not in the iCloud backup when you lose the phone, the photos are gone. Check that the Gallery shows All backed up to iCloud.
You can delete the iCloud backup in Settings. Deleting the vault on the active iPhone deletes it too.
For a new iPhone you also need your Emergency Kit, which holds the Secret Key. The steps are in moving your vault to a new iPhone.
Before you move photos in
Importing copies a photo. The original stays in Photos until you delete it.
With iCloud Photos on, a delete on one device reaches all your devices that use it. Deleted photos wait in Recently Deleted for 30 days. Apple also says that items in iCloud Photos are not duplicated in your iCloud Backup.
Sources
- Apple Support: Set up and use iCloud Photos (checked 2026-11-06)
- Apple Support: Delete photos on your iPhone or iPad (checked 2026-11-06)
