Hidlet vs Calculator# Hide Photos Videos: Disguise or Encryption?

Hidlet is an iPhone app

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Calculator# Hide Photos Videos, from NewSoftwares.net, is one of the most popular calculator vaults on the App Store. On your home screen it looks like a calculator, and typing a secret code opens your hidden photos. It’s a neat trick. But if someone does get past the calculator, what then protects the photos?

This comparison puts Calculator# and Hidlet side by side, using only what Calculator#’s own App Store listing, product page and privacy policies say. Where the developer doesn’t say something, neither do we.

Checked on 25 October 2026, against Calculator# Hide Photos Videos 3.4.12 on the US App Store.

The short version

Hiding the app versus locking the photos

Calculator#’s big idea is camouflage. Someone glancing at your phone sees a calculator, not a vault. On top of that you can lock it with a PIN, a password, a pattern, Touch ID or Face ID.

What the listing doesn’t do is say how the photos are stored. It talks about hiding and password-protecting files, and the word “encrypt” doesn’t appear. The app’s own privacy page does say NewSoftwares “encrypts all data on your system”, but it names no method and says nothing about keys. The company’s wider privacy policy lists photos and videos among the data it encrypts on your devices, but it also names no method for them; it mentions AES-256 only for a different product, Folder Lock.

That doesn’t prove the photos aren’t encrypted. It means you can’t check from the developer’s own pages.

Hidlet’s disguise stops at the icon: with Pro it can look like a calculator or another everyday tool on the Home Screen, but opening it shows the lock screen. The real protection is in the lock:

• Each vault has its own random key.
• Every photo and video is encrypted with AES-256 before it’s saved.
• Your pattern unlocks the vault’s key on the phone and is never stored anywhere.
• Guessing patterns is slowed down on purpose, and after three wrong guesses each one adds a growing wait.

More on that on the pattern lock page, and on what AES-256 really protects in Is the iPhone Hidden Album Encrypted?

When someone makes you unlock it

Calculator# has several tools for awkward moments. A Panic Switch quickly jumps to another app. Disguise Mode shows a fake crash notice. Hack Monitor logs failed attempts to get in and shows them to you. The developer doesn’t say whether the app has a decoy vault or a fake PIN.

Hidlet has no panic switch, no fake crash screen and no break-in log. Its answer to pressure is different. Every pattern opens its own vault, and the app never shows a list of them. You can keep a vault of ordinary photos and open that one when someone insists. Nothing on screen hints that another vault exists. That’s the decoy vault, and it’s in the free plan. Pro adds a duress pattern that also removes this phone’s access to your other vaults, while the encrypted backup stays safe in your iCloud.

Hidlet also locks the moment you leave the app, and screenshots or screen recordings of it come out blank.

Backup, new phones and forgotten passwords

Calculator# can back up to your own iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive or OneDrive, and restore from there if your phone is lost or stolen. It also offers Wi-Fi transfer from a PC or Mac. NewSoftwares’ company-wide privacy policy says data in Dropbox, Google Drive or OneDrive is kept “in encrypted format”, but that policy doesn’t name Calculator# or iCloud.

If you forget your password, the listing says you can “retrieve your lost password through your registered email”. That’s convenient. It also means an email address is tied to your vault.

Hidlet keeps the key with you:

• Backup: each vault is encrypted on the phone, then saved to your own iCloud. Neither Apple nor we can open it.
• New phone: install Hidlet and draw your pattern. This works when iCloud Keychain is on; if it’s off, your recovery phrase restores the vault instead.
• Forgot your pattern: enter the 9-word recovery phrase and set a new pattern, free.

The trade-off is real: lose both the pattern and the phrase, and the vault can’t be opened by anyone, including us. More in encrypted backup.

Ads and your data

The listing says the free version is “free with ads and limitations”, and paying removes the ads for a year. The listing doesn’t carry Apple’s “Contains Advertising” label. NewSoftwares’ company privacy policy lists delivering “targeted advertising to you” as one of its purposes.

Calculator#’s App Store privacy label lists contact info under “Data Used to Track You”. It also lists your email address and your photos or videos as collected, not linked to you, for app functionality.

Hidlet has no accounts, no email and no ads, and it includes no analytics or tracking code.

Where Calculator# is better

Calculator# does a lot that Hidlet doesn’t:

• A full disguise: the app itself looks like a calculator. Hidlet Pro only changes the icon.
• Much more than photos: a web browser, a password manager and wallet, notes, to-dos, contacts, audio and documents. Hidlet has no browser and no password manager.
• Break-in log: Hack Monitor records failed attempts. Hidlet doesn’t.
• More ways to unlock, including Face ID and a PIN, if you’d rather not learn a pattern. Hidlet opens only with a pattern.
• More devices: iPhone, iPad, Apple silicon Macs and Apple Vision, plus an Android version. Hidlet has no Mac or Android app.
• A long track record: more than 28,000 ratings on the US App Store.

Hidlet’s limits are worth knowing too. It runs on iPhone and iPad (sync between them needs Pro), and the free plan holds 3 vaults with up to 100 photos and 10 videos in each.

The bottom line

Calculator# is a capable all-in-one hiding app, and the calculator disguise is a smart way to stay out of sight. But its listing doesn’t say how your photos are protected once someone is past the calculator, and password recovery runs through your email. If you’d rather have photos encrypted with a key only you hold, with no email, no ads and no tracking, Hidlet is built for exactly that.

Hidlet is available on the App Store.