Hide photos in an encrypted vault

Your camera roll is the most visited place on your phone. Anyone who borrows it to look at one picture can scroll past it to everything else. Moving private photos into Velcrypt takes them out of that scroll and puts them behind a pattern and encryption.

How importing photos works

Importing is the act of bringing a photo from your iPhone's Photos library into a Velcrypt vault. You pick one or several photos with the standard iOS photo picker, and Velcrypt stores an encrypted copy in the vault you currently have open.

The important word is copy. Velcrypt does not move or delete anything in your Photos library. The original stays exactly where it was until you remove it. That is a safety measure, because you can check that the import worked before anything is deleted, but it means one more step is up to you.

Every imported photo is encrypted on the device with AES-256-GCM, using a key derived from that vault's master key. How those keys are built is explained on the encryption page.

Removing the originals

A photo is only private if the other copies are gone. After importing:

1. Open Photos and select the originals you just imported.
2. Delete them. They move to the Recently Deleted album.
3. Open Recently Deleted. In iOS 18 and later it sits under “Utilities” in the Photos app; in older versions it is near the bottom of the Albums tab.
4. Delete them again from there. Otherwise they stay recoverable for about 30 days.

Since iOS 16, Recently Deleted and Hidden are locked with Face ID, Touch ID or your passcode by default, but anyone who knows your device passcode can still open them. If you use iCloud Photos, deleting on one device removes the photo from your other devices too. The full walkthrough is in deleting originals after import.

Also think about copies elsewhere: photos sent in chats, shared albums, email attachments or a computer you once synced with. Velcrypt can only protect what is inside the vault.

Organising photos in albums

Inside each vault you can create albums, for example “Documents”, “Personal” or “Trip”, and sort photos into them. Multi-select lets you move many photos at once, and you can move items between albums whenever your system changes. See the albums feature for details.

Albums belong to the vault they are in. A different pattern opens a different vault with its own albums, which is how hidden vaults keep separate collections fully apart.

Viewing photos inside the vault

Photos open in Velcrypt's built-in viewer. You can pinch to zoom into details and swipe left or right to move through an album. Photos are decrypted for display while the vault is open and the app locks again on its own when you leave it, according to your auto-lock setting.

Velcrypt vs the Hidden album

	iPhone Hidden album	Velcrypt vault
Where the photo lives	Your Photos library	An encrypted vault in the app
How it is unlocked	Face ID, Touch ID or device passcode	Your Velcrypt pattern
iCloud	Syncs with iCloud Photos if enabled	Not included in iCloud or computer backups
Separate collections	One Hidden album	A separate vault per pattern

The Hidden album is convenient and good enough for many people. Its limits are covered in is the iPhone Hidden album private?, and a broader walkthrough of every option is in how to hide photos on iPhone.

Good to know

• Velcrypt has no built-in camera. Take the photo with the Camera app, import it, then delete the original.
• Photos can carry location and device data. If you plan to share them later, remove photo metadata first.
• Vault data is not backed up in the first version. If a photo is irreplaceable, keep a second copy somewhere you trust.