Vaulty review: is Vaulty safe, and is it still a good Android vault?

At a glance

What is Vaulty?

Vaulty is one of the oldest photo vaults on Android. Squid Tooth put it on Google Play in July 2010, and the listing now shows more than 10 million installs. You hide photos and videos from the gallery, and Vaulty keeps them behind a PIN or a text password. It also stores copies of IDs and cards.

Vaulty runs on Android only. 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.” An App Store app named “Vaulty: Hidden Photos Vault” comes from MAPPVATE YAZILIM LIMITED SIRKETI, a different company.

The model is freemium. The free version shows ads. Vaulty Pro removes the ads and adds “Advanced Security” and “Additional Features”.

How Vaulty protects your photos

When you hide a file, Vaulty copies it into a private folder (Documents/Vaulty/data) in its own .vdata format. The help center says the file “is renamed and modified so that it cannot be opened without Vaulty”, and the original leaves the gallery. Files backed up to Google Drive “remain encrypted”, Squid Tooth says.

No Vaulty page we found names a cipher or says how keys are made. “Renamed and modified” is a weaker claim than encryption with a named cipher, and you cannot check it from the outside.

Squid Tooth also says nothing goes to its own servers: “Vaulty’s creators can’t see or access your content.” That design choice is in your favor.

Lock, forgotten password and decoy

You pick a numeric PIN or a text password. A fingerprint or face can open the vault on supported phones. One low-star review from September 2026 says Vaulty now holds biometric login “behind a paywall”.

If you forget the password, Vaulty asks the security question you set. Its help page suggests questions such as “Where were you New Year’s 2003?” If you forget the answer too, you email support. A security question is easy to use. Anyone who knows you well may also guess the answer.

Vaulty lets you make several vaults, each with its own password, so you can show a different one to different people. The break-in alert takes a photo after a wrong password. Two disguises work: a real calculator, where you enter the PIN and hold “=”, and a stocks lookup app, where you search for your password.

Backup and moving to a new phone

Vaulty syncs your hidden files to a hidden app folder in your own Google Drive, for free. The sync is two-way across your Android phones. Squid Tooth warns: “If you delete 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 its folder outside the app, so the files survive an uninstall. They do not open anywhere else: Squid Tooth says you cannot reach your Vaulty items from a computer or an iPhone. To move to an iPhone, you unhide every file on Android first.

Price and plans

Squid Tooth does not publish the Vaulty Pro price on its website. Google Play lists in-app items from $0.99 to $99.99 per item on the US store (checked October 8, 2026). Check the price inside the app before you buy.

Data safety and ads

Google Play marks Vaulty “Contains ads”. The developer fills in its data safety section. It says Vaulty may share device or other IDs with third parties and may collect financial info. It also says data is encrypted in transit and that you can ask for data to be deleted.

None of this says that Vaulty looks at your photos. It says the free app runs ads, which is fair to weigh when you choose a privacy app. One reviewer wrote: “Discreteness ruined. ads that aren’t muted” (October 2025).

What users report

We read 1,940 Google Play reviews from US English users, from 2018 to October 2026. 670 of them give 1 or 2 stars. We counted themes in those 670 with keyword matches, so read the counts as approximate:

• Lost photos or videos: about 240 reviews. “twice within 6 months I opened my app and all images were gone” (September 2026).
• Crashes, or a vault that will not open: about 125 reviews.
• Backup or Google Drive sync fails: about 109 reviews. “Google drive backup still does not work.” (July 2025)
• Paywall or subscription changes: about 75 reviews.
• Support does not answer: about 72 reviews.
• Export or unhide problems: about 50 reviews. One said Vaulty “deleted it instead of unhiding back to gallery” (August 2025).

What Vaulty does well

Vaulty has kept files for millions of people for more than 15 years. 48 of the 4 and 5 star reviews in our sample say a backup or a move to a new phone worked. The free Google Drive sync covers the free version with ads, which few vaults offer. Its break-in photo is a favorite. A 5 star review with 338 helpful votes says “when the wrong pin is put in it takes a picture with the selfie camera”. The stocks front is a rare disguise. Support replies also improved: the developer answered 68 of 77 low-star reviews in our 2026 sample, up from 8 of 187 in 2024.

York Vault as an alternative

York Vault is our own app, so read this part with that in mind. It runs on Android and iPhone. Each item is encrypted on your phone with its own key (AES-256-GCM), and on Android the keys sit in Android Keystore. A 12-word recovery key replaces the security question. Backup of every item to your own Google Drive, or iCloud on iPhone, is free and encrypted before upload. So are the cover code, the erase code and wrong-code photos. York Vault shows no ads on any plan, and it has no stocks app disguise. See York Vault vs Vaulty for the full table, and the Vaulty alternative page for how to unhide everything first.

Download York Vault on the App Store or Google Play.

Who it fits

Side by side with York Vault, row by row: York Vault vs Vaulty: which photo vault should you use?