iPhone & iPad · iOS 17 and later
Photos that stay on your phone.
Brass Key is a photo vault that lives on your device and nowhere else. Everything in it is encrypted with a key only your passcode opens — and we do not have that key, because there is no we in the loop.
No account. No sign-up. Nothing to create but a passcode.
How it works
Encrypted on the device, opened by your passcode
When you set up your vault, the app generates a random encryption key and locks it with a key derived from your passcode. Your passcode is never stored — only the locked result, which is useless without it. Face ID or Touch ID can open the vault day to day; the passcode is always there underneath.
AES-256, done properly
Every photo, thumbnail, album name and caption is encrypted. Your passcode is stretched with 600,000 rounds of PBKDF2 before it touches anything.
Makes no network requests
No analytics, no crash-reporting service, no advertising identifier and no third-party code of any kind. The only traffic is Apple's, for the subscription.
Locks when you leave
Leaving the app discards the keys from memory, not just the screen. Set a grace period, or none. Too many wrong passcodes can erase the vault, if you turn that on.
Hidden from the app switcher
The screen is covered before iOS takes its app-switcher snapshot, and the vault is left out of iCloud and computer backups, so no copy leaks that way.
Location stripped on import
GPS coordinates come off photos as they enter the vault, so a photo you later share does not say where it was taken. Off by default is your choice to change.
A privacy report you can read
Settings has a plain-language page listing exactly what the app can and cannot see, what leaves the device, and what does not. It is short, because the answer is short.
Everyday use
A proper photo app, not just a locked folder
Privacy is the reason to have a vault. The rest of this is the reason to keep using it.
Photos in from anywhere
Import from your photo library or Files, take a photo straight into the vault with the camera, or use the share sheet from any app — even while the vault is locked. Importing can delete the original from your camera roll if you ask.
Albums that nest
Albums inside albums, as deep as you like. Pick any photo as an album's cover. Long-press to select many photos at once and move, copy, share or delete them together.
Lock individual albums
Put a second lock on any album. It asks for Face ID or your passcode again before it opens, and until then its photos stay out of search, out of the share sheet, and out of sight.
Edit without losing the original
Crop, straighten, adjust and filter. Save over the current image or keep it as a new version — the original stays put either way, and every version is there to go back to.
Find things again
Search by album name or by the captions you add. Swipe between photos in an album, pinch to zoom, and open the info panel for the details.
Photos out, on your terms
Share, save back to Photos, or export a whole album. Copy a photo and the clipboard forgets it after ten minutes and, unless you say otherwise, keeps it off your other devices.
Nothing is deleted in a hurry
Deleted photos wait in Recently Deleted for thirty days, where they can be put back. Emptying it is the only thing that removes them for good.
Two looks, and one that switches
A dark Vault theme, a light Daylight theme, or Auto, which changes over at hours you choose. It follows your text size, works with VoiceOver and Voice Control, and honors Reduce Motion.
Made for iPad too
On an iPad the albums sit in a sidebar beside the photos, with Search and Settings a tap away — the same vault, laid out for the larger screen.
Two devices
Sync without a server
Pair an iPhone and an iPad of your own, once, by checking that the same six digits appear on both. After that, whenever both have Brass Key open and unlocked nearby, they bring each other up to date by themselves — albums, photos, captions, edits, locks and deletions — directly over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. Nothing is uploaded, because there is nowhere to upload it to.
A small icon at the top of the library turns while a sync is running. Tap it to see which device it is talking to, how many photos have moved, and the one moving now — or to sync right away, or stop.
Every transfer is encrypted with a key the two devices agree on at pairing time, on top of the encryption the link already has. A device that was not paired in person cannot join, and cannot pretend to be one that was.
The part nobody else says out loud
If you forget your passcode, your photos are gone.
That is not a gap we intend to close. A reset link, a recovery email or a support team who can let you back in would each mean somebody other than you can open your vault — and then the encryption is theater.
So: write your passcode down and keep it somewhere safe. Turn on Face ID so you rarely have to type it. Pair a second device if you want a copy that survives losing your phone.
We cannot recover it. Not for you, not for anyone with a court order, not for ourselves. There is nothing on our side to recover from.
Price
Free to keep your photos safe. Paid to keep them organized.
Everything that protects your photos is free and always will be. Holding security features back from people who have not paid would make this a worse privacy app, not a better business.
Free
$0 / forever
- The encrypted vault itself
- Passcode, Face ID and Touch ID
- Unlimited photos
- Every way in: library, Files, camera, share sheet
- The full editor and version history
- Search, captions and Recently Deleted
- Sharing, copying and export
- Your Library album, plus two more
Brass Key Pro
$1.99 / year
- Everything in Free
- Unlimited albums and sub-albums
- Locked albums
- Device-to-device syncing, automatic when both are open
If a subscription ends, nothing is hidden, locked away or deleted. Every album you made keeps working, every lock you set still opens and can still be removed, and everything already synced stays on both devices.
What we can see
Nothing. There is no account to sign into, no server to store anything on, and no analytics collecting what you do.
Apple handles the subscription, so Apple knows you bought one, exactly as with any App Store purchase. That is the entire list, and the privacy policy says so in more detail and in the same plain words.