How do you hide documents and ID cards on your phone?

Why people keep IDs in a vault

Many people use a vault for more than photos. We studied 836 App Store reviews. 9 users say they keep IDs, licenses, insurance cards or credit cards in their vault. One Private Photo Vault user wrote: “I use it to store items like ID, drivers license, credit cards, passport etc.” A Keepsafe user wrote: “I’ve took pictures of all my insurance cards so I don’t have to carry the originals.”

A photo of a passport in the camera roll is open to anyone who picks up the phone. So York Vault gives documents and cards their own place, on iPhone, iPad and Android, free.

Scan paper and cards

1. Open York Vault and tap Add, then pick the scanner.
2. Hold the phone over the page. The scanner finds the edges and takes the picture.
3. Scan more pages if the document has them.
4. Save. York Vault stores all the pages as one PDF in your library.

The scan goes straight into York Vault, encrypted. No plain copy goes to the camera roll or to the storage of the phone. For a card, pick card mode. York Vault pairs the front and the back into one item. If you already have photos of the pages, our free photo to PDF tool puts them into one PDF in your browser, with no metadata.

You can also turn on text recognition for a scan. It runs on the phone, and then search finds the words in the scan.

The IDs and cards view

York Vault has a view for IDs and cards only. It shows each card as a front and back pair.

• Show at a counter. Tap a card to show it full screen, with the brightness up. A clerk can read it without you sending the file anywhere.
• Copy a number. Tap a card number to copy it. The copy stays on this phone. It does not go to your other devices, and it clears after 60 seconds.
• Expiry reminder. Add an expiry date, and York Vault reminds you before it. The reminder does not name the card.

During setup, you can add a starter album called “IDs and cards”. You can also skip it.

Screenshots, iPhone and Android

Here the two platforms differ, and it matters for documents:

	iPhone and iPad	Android
Screenshots	iOS lets no app block a screenshot.	Android blocks screenshots on every York Vault screen.
Screen recording and mirroring	York Vault blanks the screen.	Android blocks screen recording.

So on an iPhone, a person with your unlocked phone can still take a screenshot of an open card. Lock York Vault when you hand the phone over. See quick exit for fast ways to close it.

How the built-in tools compare

Apple Notes can scan. The Apple guide says the scan “is saved as a PDF in the note”. Apple also lists notes you cannot lock, which include “notes with video, audio, PDF, or file attachments”. Check that your scan note can take a lock before you rely on it.

Google Drive on Android can scan too. Google says it saves scans “as searchable PDFs on your Google Drive”. The scan sits in your Drive with your other files.

Neither tool gives you a separate view for cards, a clipboard that clears, or a reminder with neutral text.

How other vault apps do it

App	IDs and documents	Where we read it
Keepsafe	“Scan Document”, “Scan Card” and a “Cards & ID” album template.	App text and App Store listing
Calculator Lock	A card wallet with 11 categories, such as passport and license.	App package

We read the app text in each App Store package in September 2026. We checked the listings on 2026-10-02.

Keep the copies safe

Your scans are part of the encrypted backup, like every other item. Write down your recovery key and keep it with your passport. Then a lost phone does not mean lost documents. For photos of documents already in your camera roll, read how to password protect photos on iPhone.