What is a good alternative to LockMyPix?

LockMyPix Secret Photo Vault and York Vault side by side

Why do people look for a LockMyPix alternative?

LockMyPix is one of the few vault apps that encrypts files and says how: “AES CTR 256”. It has 2,563 US ratings at 4.7. We read 52 App Store reviews from the Canadian, British and Australian stores, from 2020 to June 2026. Most 5-star reviews are short. The 11 one-star reviews carry the useful detail.

Theme in 52 reviews	Reviews
Praise for privacy	8
Praise for ease of use	7
Photos lost	3
Locked out, or password stopped working	3
Support did not answer	3
Ads	2
Crashes	2

The sample is small, so treat these as signals. They line up with what the help desk and the app itself show.

Key features sit behind Premium

LockMyPix’s Get Premium page lists Intruder Detection, Instant Cloud Backup, the Fake Vault, hiding the app and Flip Lock as Premium features. So a free user has no cloud backup and no decoy. The app’s own text shows what happens when Premium ends: a message asks you to reactivate Premium “to open your FakeVault again”. If someone forces you to open the decoy at that moment, the message tells them a second vault exists.

Ads and offers

“LockMyPix Free Basic Protection shows ads,” says the help desk. A British reviewer wrote: “Now it is advert riddled trash. Deleted !” (1★, December 2025). The app also ships many sale badges and countdown offers, with discounts from 25 to 92 percent in its own text. The US App Store list shows 10 Premium purchases, from $3.99 a week to $189.99 for lifetime. Yearly plans alone come at $14.99, $23.99 and $29.99. With several prices for the same plan, it is hard to know which one is the real price.

Recovery that shows your password

Email recovery is optional. When you use it, “Your password will be displayed which you can use for the login.” That means the app keeps your password in a form it can show back. One reviewer called it “an extremely questionable decision” (1★, December 2025). Without recovery set up, the help desk is clear: “There’s no backdoor.”

Lost photos and slow support

“Until I opened it one day and found ALL my photos gone.” (1★, June 2026). The same reviewer says support asked for device details and then went quiet. Another said moving one photo in nested folders took “up to 30 seconds” (1★, November 2025).

What to look for in a replacement

1. Encryption at least as clear as LockMyPix’s, with a named cipher.
2. A free backup to a place you control, with restore on a new phone.
3. A decoy that works on every plan, so it never shows a billing message.
4. A recovery method that never shows your code, such as a recovery key only you hold.
5. Free export with Live Photos and dates kept.
6. One clear price, so you know what you will pay next year.

How to export your files from LockMyPix

LockMyPix calls export “unlock”. Its help desk gives these steps:

1. Open the folder that holds the files.
2. Press and hold a file to enter select mode.
3. Tap each file you want to export.
4. Tap the unlock button in the top menu.

The help desk warns: “Unlocked files are no longer securely encrypted and can be viewed by anyone who gains access to the device.” It also mentions a blue arrow in the unlock menu to choose a destination or keep the folder structure. In the app, files go back with Save to gallery.

Since version 4.1.1 (September 2026), LockMyPix saves Live Photos “back to your gallery as real Live Photos”. A June 2026 review complained that Live Photos came out as videos, so update first.

Before you uninstall:

• Restore Trash. “Files in your Trash are not considered in Cloud backups or backup files.”
• Make a backup file. Use Create Backup in settings as a fallback. On iOS, the help desk says app files “are deleted by default when uninstalling.”
• Count your items in Photos against each folder.

Then add the items to your new app, and delete them from Photos and Recently Deleted.

What LockMyPix does well

LockMyPix gets several hard things right:

• Real encryption of files and backups with AES, stated on its help desk.
• Live Photos and HDR support since September 2026.
• A portable backup file that moves between iPhone and Android, which few vault apps offer.
• Folders, subfolders, sorting and search.
• Share with password, which sends files as an encrypted package.
• Long-term trust from some users. “I have tried different apps but this one is the only one that hasn’t lost my pics” (5★, August 2021).
• No back door. Without a recovery option, nobody can reset your password.
• Small safety tools such as a shuffled keypad, shake to lock and a trash that warns you before it clears old files.

If you already pay for Premium and your backups work, LockMyPix may be enough.

What York Vault does differently

York Vault is on the App Store for iPhone and iPad and on Google Play for Android. Plus adds the Mac app, and Pro adds the web app. Here is what it does differently:

• A free encrypted backup of every item, encrypted on your phone first. It goes to your own iCloud, or Google Drive on Android.
• Phone-to-phone transfer and an encrypted backup file that move a library between iPhone and Android, free.
• A free cover code and erase code. The cover library never shows a billing message, also after a plan ends. See cover and erase codes.
• A recovery key of 12 words that you hold. York Vault never stores your code in a form it can show.
• A free photo on a wrong code and a log of attempts.
• No ads, and one price list with no countdown offers. York Vault uses an attribution tool to measure its own ads, and its privacy label says so.
• Export of everything to Photos or Files, with Live Photos and dates.
• Secure notes and password-locked files for sharing, free, plus a private browser in Plus and Pro.

See plans for what each plan includes, or download York Vault on the App Store or Google Play.

Other alternatives worth checking

• Vaultaire also encrypts on the device, with no ads and free backup.
• Keepsafe syncs one account across Android and iPhone.
• Private Photo Vault has a decoy password and a break-in report.
• Our guide are photo vault apps safe explains how to check any vault.