Does a photo vault take up space on your phone, and can it remove duplicates?

Why vault storage confuses people

A vault keeps a full copy of every item on your phone. So it grows as you add photos and videos, and that part is normal. The problem starts when the space does not come back after a delete.

We studied 836 App Store reviews. 13 users say a vault took more space after they deleted files, or several times the size of their items. One Keepsafe user wrote: “17GB of content in keepsafe was consuming 85GB of space on my phone.” The Keepsafe app text explains part of it: “Everything in Trash still takes up space on your device.”

York Vault answers this in two ways. It shows you what holds the space. And a delete gives the space back fast.

The storage screen (free)

The storage screen in settings shows these numbers:

Row	What it counts
Library	All items in the library you opened
Trash	Deleted items that you can still restore
Cache	Thumbnails and previews, encrypted
Waiting to back up	Items that are only on this phone for now
Free space	Space left on your phone
Each album	The size of every album

Delete 5 GB of items and empty Trash. The free space on your phone goes up by 5 GB within 1 minute. Read trash and recovery for how Trash and Empty Trash work.

Duplicates

Free: exact copies stay out. When you add items, York Vault checks each one against your library. If an exact copy is already there, York Vault skips it. This happens on every plan.

Plus and Pro: the duplicate review. With Plus or Pro, York Vault finds 2 kinds of duplicates:

• Exact copies, found by a file fingerprint.
• Similar photos, such as a burst of shots of one moment. You pick 1 of 3 levels of match.

For each group, York Vault shows the space you can save. It marks the copy with the highest resolution to keep. You confirm. The other copies go to Trash, never to a final delete. So you have 30 days to change your mind.

Optimize phone storage (Plus and Pro)

This option keeps thumbnails and previews on your phone and keeps the full originals in your backup. When you open an item, York Vault downloads the original and shows the progress. To make a smaller copy of a photo to send, such as one under 100 KB for a form, use our free image compressor. It runs in your browser.

• It is never on by default. You turn it on.
• Items you mark Keep on phone always stay on the phone.
• If your plan ends, York Vault deletes nothing. Download all stays free and brings every original back.

This is a trade. Without a connection, you see the preview but not the original. In our review study, one Keepsafe user had 200 videos where only about 5 played. The rest showed “Downloading Original” and never finished. So York Vault keeps this option off until you ask for it. Videos that you keep on the phone play from local storage, as on our video page.

How Apple Photos compares

Apple Photos has a Duplicates collection. The Apple guide says to tap Collections, then Utilities, then Duplicates, then Merge. Apple says the iPhone finds duplicates only while it is locked and on power. The search can take up to a few days. This works on the Photos library only. It cannot see inside York Vault.

After you add photos to York Vault, the originals still use space in Apple Photos or Google Photos. Remove them to get that space back. See how adding and cleanup work.

How other apps do it

App	Duplicates and space	Where we read it
Private Photo Vault	“Exact Duplicates” and “Similar Images” with 3 levels. Its top plan lists “Duplicate Detection”.	App text
LockMyPix	A paid “Duplicate Finder”. “The first file per section remains.”	App text
Keepsafe	“Space Saver” sends originals to its cloud. It sits in the paid list.	App Store listing
Vaultaire	“Free Up Deleted Space returns the space still held by files you deleted.”	App Store listing

We read the app text in each App Store package in September 2026. We checked the listings on 2026-10-02. Viewing, export and restore of your own items stay free on every plan. See what stays free.