Private vault for photos and documents
The vault that finds what you locked away.
Cloakbox encrypts your private photos, videos and documents on your phone, then lets you search them by describing what is in them. Nothing is sent anywhere to make that work.
- No account
- No ads
- Search runs on the phone
- Pay once if you like
Searched on this phone. Nothing was uploaded.
Describe it, get it.
Type what a photo shows or a word printed on a document. Results in about a second, in English, German, Spanish and more.
Built so you cannot lose it.
A recovery key from the first minute, a trash with 30 days of undo, and export of everything at any time, paid or not.
Nobody else holds a key.
No account, no ads, no server of ours. Backup goes to your own iCloud or Google Drive, already encrypted.
Search
A locked box is not much use if you cannot find things in it.
A vault fills up with the things you most need to find again: an ID, a contract, a receipt, one photo out of thousands. Cloakbox reads and understands them on the phone, so the vault stays searchable while staying sealed.
- By description"red car at night", "whiteboard from the workshop". Photos and videos are matched by what they show.
- By text insideWords in photos, screenshots and PDFs are recognised, so a scanned letter turns up when you type a name from it.
- Documents firstScan pages with the camera into a PDF, straight into the vault. IDs, receipts and screenshots collect themselves into smart albums.
- On the deviceSearch runs locally on your phone. It works in airplane mode.
Never lose it
Forgot the PIN? You still get in.
Lost photos and forgotten PINs are what people complain about most in vault app reviews. Cloakbox gives you a recovery key during setup and makes you confirm you saved it.
- Recovery keyOpens the vault after a forgotten PIN and restores it on a new phone. Save it to a password manager or print it.
- Your own cloudEncrypted backup to iCloud on iPhone, Google Drive on Android. We never hold it, so we can never delete it or charge you to get it back.
- TrashDeleted items wait 30 days before they are gone.
- ExportEverything, in original quality, whenever you want. Free, including after a subscription ends.
Your recovery key
Privacy, itemised
What leaves your phone
"Private" is easy to print on a box. Here is the full list instead.
| What | Leaves the phone | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Photos, videos, documents | Only encrypted | And only to your own iCloud or Google Drive, and only if you switch backup on. |
| PIN and recovery key | Never | We cannot reset them, because we never have them. |
| Search words, recognised text | Never | Search and text recognition run on the phone. |
| File names, how many items you keep | Never | Not in analytics, not in crash reports. |
| Search model download | Once | Fetched when you turn smart search on. The request carries nothing about you or your files. |
| Usage events | Your choice | Events like "search was used", under a random ID that is not tied to your name, e-mail or files. It shows us which parts of the app are used, so we improve those. Switch it off in Settings and the ID is erased. |
| Crash reports | Your choice | Stripped of paths and text before they are sent. |
| Purchases | Store, RevenueCat | Apple or Google process the payment. RevenueCat confirms it for us under an anonymous ID. They know you bought Premium, not who you are or what is in the vault. |
Every file gets its own key (AES-256-GCM). The PIN is stretched with Argon2id and bound to a secret in the phone's secure hardware, so a copy of the files alone cannot be brute-forced. The file format is written down and public.
Compared
What you usually get from a vault app
| Feature | Typical vault app | Cloakbox |
|---|---|---|
| Finding something | Browse albums | Search by description and by text inside |
| Forgotten PIN | Reset by e-mail, if you set one up | Recovery key, no e-mail needed |
| Cloud copy | The vendor's cloud, cut back or deleted when you stop paying | Your iCloud or Drive, never removed by us |
| Ads | Common in free tiers | None, in any tier |
| Account | Often an e-mail address | None |
| Tracking | Usage data used for advertising in the big free apps | No advertising, no tracking |
| iPhone and Android | Not always both | Both |
Pricing
Pay for size, never for safety.
The recovery key, export and restore work in every state, free or lapsed.
Free
- Up to 100 items
- Smart search and text recognition
- PIN, Face ID or fingerprint, recovery key
- Camera and document scanner
- Trash, export, restore from a backup
- No ads
Premium
- Unlimited items
- Encrypted backup and sync to your iCloud or Google Drive
- A second vault behind a different PIN
- Space saver and duplicate finder
- Photo of whoever enters a wrong PIN
Plainly
What Cloakbox cannot do
A vault that overpromises is worse than no vault.
- Lose both the PIN and the recovery key and the vault is gone. Nobody, including us, can open it.
- An unlocked phone in someone's hand with the vault open is outside what encryption protects.
- iPhone cannot block screenshots. Android can, and Cloakbox does. On iPhone the app hides its content in the app switcher.
- Originals you remove from the gallery sit in the system's Recently Deleted for 30 days. The app tells you where to empty it.
- A backup does not cross platforms yet. iCloud on iPhone, Google Drive on Android.
Questions
Asked before installing
Is the search really offline?
Yes. The model that understands photos and text is downloaded once and runs on the phone. Queries, recognised text and results are never sent anywhere.
What happens if I stop paying?
Nothing is deleted. You keep everything in the vault, you can export all of it, and you can restore from your backup. You cannot add items beyond the free limit or run new backups.
Can you see my files or reset my PIN?
No. There is no account and no server of ours. The keys exist only on your phone and in the recovery key you saved.
Where is the backup stored?
In your own iCloud on iPhone or your own Google Drive on Android, already encrypted before it leaves the phone. Apple and Google store sealed data they cannot read.
Which files can I keep?
Photos, videos, PDFs and other documents. Import from the gallery, from Files, by sharing into the app, or capture directly with the camera or scanner.
Is it a disguised app?
No. Cloakbox looks like what it is. It does not pretend to be a calculator, and it has no feature that silently destroys data.
Get the app