Keepsafe vs Vaulty, which is better, and is Vaulty on iPhone?

Side by side

Which one suits you

Keepsafe suits people who need one vault across iPhone and Android and want backup without managing a cloud account of their own, and who accept an email login and Premium for the decoy. Vaulty suits Android users who want no account, a free backup in their own Google Drive and a calculator disguise. iPhone users cannot get Squid Tooth's Vaulty today.

Keepsafe and Vaulty are two of the oldest photo vaults on Android. Vaulty says it has been around since 2011, and Keepsafe reached the App Store in 2012. Both have more than 400,000 Google Play reviews. The first question for most readers is a different one, though: which Vaulty are we talking about?

Which Vaulty is this?

The Vaulty with 10 million+ downloads is “Vaulty : Photo Vault & Hide” by Squid Tooth LLC, on Google Play. Squid Tooth’s website offers only an Android download and says “iOS Coming Soon”.

On the App Store you can find an app named “Vaulty: Hidden Photos Vault”. Its seller is MAPPVATE YAZILIM LIMITED SIRKETI, not Squid Tooth. As of October 2, 2026, it has 4.62 stars from 436 US ratings. Squid Tooth’s help center says: “Vaulty is not yet available on iOS. Any apps claiming to be Vaulty in the App Store are unauthorized and potentially dangerous.”

We did not test the MAPPVATE app, and we make no claim about how it handles your files. Its App Store privacy label lists data linked to you, including email address, “Photos or Videos”, user ID and device ID. Read that label and its privacy policy before you install it.

The rest of this page compares Squid Tooth’s Vaulty with Keepsafe. If you use an iPhone, only Keepsafe is an option of the two today.

Accounts and forgotten passwords

Keepsafe needs an email account. If you forget your PIN, Keepsafe emails an access code to every verified address on the account, after a 5-minute wait. Anyone who gets into your email can do the same, after that wait.

Vaulty has no account. Its reset page says: “For privacy reasons, Vaulty does not have an account that is registered with us.”

To reset a password, you answer the security question you set. Vaulty’s help warns against questions that someone could guess or find online, such as a favorite color. If you forget the answer, you can write to support. Vaulty says it has no access to your content and cannot recover anything for you.

Backup and new phones

Keepsafe backs up to its own cloud. Basic covers the first 200 items, and Premium covers up to 10,000, per Keepsafe support. It syncs across iPhone, iPad and Android on the same account.

Vaulty backs up to your own Google Drive, for free, also on the ad version. Files go to a hidden app folder in Drive in a private .vdata format, and Vaulty syncs them between Android devices on the same Google account. Vaulty’s backup page has one warning worth reading twice: if you delete the .vdata files from Drive, “even just move them to Trash, Vaulty will see them as deleted and will remove them from your device as well.”

Vaulty keeps hidden files on the phone, outside the app’s own storage, so they stay after an uninstall. That helps after an accidental delete, but it also means a phone reset without a backup loses them.

How each app protects files

Keepsafe says it encrypts files with 256-bit AES as soon as you add them, and that only an unlocked vault decrypts them.

Vaulty describes its method in plain terms. It copies each file to a private folder in its .vdata format. It then renames the file and modifies it “so that it cannot be opened without Vaulty”. It then deletes the original from the gallery. Another Vaulty help page says backed-up files “remain encrypted” on Google Drive. Vaulty’s pages do not describe the encryption in more detail.

Decoys, break-in photos and disguise

• Decoy vault. Keepsafe sells Fake PIN as a Premium feature. Vaulty supports several vaults, each with its own password, and suggests using one as a decoy.
• Break-in photo. Keepsafe sells Break-In Alerts as Premium. Vaulty takes a photo after a wrong password, which it calls a mugshot.
• Disguise. Vaulty can look like a working calculator, where you type the PIN and hold “=”, or like a stocks lookup app. Keepsafe has a face-down lock that locks the vault when you turn the phone over.

Ads and data safety

Google Play marks both apps “Contains ads”. Vaulty Pro removes ads, and so does Keepsafe Premium.

Each developer fills in its own data safety section on Google Play. Keepsafe says it may share personal info, financial info and 3 other data types. It may collect location, personal info and 6 others. Vaulty says it may share device or other IDs and may collect financial info. Both say they encrypt data in transit and that you can ask for deletion.

Moving between Keepsafe and Vaulty

Neither app reads the other’s vault. To switch on Android, unhide or export your items in the old app so they return to the gallery. Then lock them in the new app. Vaulty’s help describes an extra path for its own files. Copy the Documents/Vaulty folder to the new phone with a file manager. Do this before you uninstall Vaulty or reset the old phone.

Count your items before and after, and keep the old app until the counts match.

Which one to choose

Pick Keepsafe if you switch between iPhone and Android, or want a backup that works with no cloud account of your own. Be ready for an email login and a Premium plan for the decoy and Trash recovery.

Pick Vaulty if you use Android, want no account, and already use Google Drive. Write down your security answer, and never clean up Vaulty’s folder in Drive.

If you move from Android to iPhone, note that Vaulty’s help says your items do not open on an iPhone. Unhide them on Android first, then move them. To pick the next app, see our guide to moving a photo vault to a new iPhone and the best photo vault apps for iPhone. See also our Keepsafe alternative page.

A third option: York Vault

York Vault is our own vault app for iPhone, iPad and Android, on the App Store and Google Play. Plus adds a Mac app, and Pro adds a web app. It has a 12-word recovery key instead of an email reset or a security question. Its free encrypted backup goes to your own iCloud, or to Google Drive on Android. It moves a library between iPhone and Android by phone-to-phone transfer. Download York Vault on the App Store or Google Play.