Hidlet vs Safe Lock: Is a Locked Vault Also an Encrypted One?

Hidlet is an iPhone app

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Safe Lock has been on the App Store since 2017 and has more than 24,000 ratings. It’s a popular pick when you search for a hidden photo vault, and it’s easy to see why: lots of ways to lock it, a fake gallery, break-in photos and a long list of extras.

If you’re choosing between it and Hidlet, the useful question is what happens underneath the lock screen. This page compares the two using only what Safe Lock’s own App Store listing, privacy policy and terms say. Where the developer doesn’t say something, we say that too.

Checked on 25 October 2026, against Safe Lock 3.1 on the US App Store.

The short version

How each one protects your photos

Safe Lock is generous with ways to lock the app. Its listing names seven: PIN code, DotLock (a dot pattern), numeric, alphabetic, passcode, Touch ID and Face ID. You can also shake or flip the phone to lock it and hide the app at once. Some of these, like Touch ID and the extra lock types, come with Premium.

What none of Safe Lock’s pages mention is encryption. The listing, the privacy policy and the terms don’t mention encryption or name a cipher. The listing does say “photos and videos are saved only on your device” and “We do not have access to your secrets”. Both are good to hear. But a lock screen stops someone from using the app; it doesn’t tell you what’s in the files underneath.

That doesn’t prove the photos aren’t encrypted. It means you can’t check.

Hidlet puts the protection in the files themselves:

• 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

Safe Lock has a fake password that “opens a fake gallery”. Type it instead of your real one, and the person watching sees a different set of photos. It also takes break-in photos: if someone tries to get in, you get a report with a picture. Hidlet doesn’t have break-in photos.

Hidlet’s answer to being pressed is built into how vaults work. Every pattern opens its own vault, and the app never shows a list of them. You can keep a vault of ordinary photos (screenshots, receipts, a few holiday pictures) 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. The encrypted backup stays in your iCloud, so you can restore them later.

Backup, new phones and forgotten codes

The listing doesn’t describe an automatic backup. Instead, you can export and import through Dropbox, Google Drive, Yandex.Disk, iCloud and Box, or move files over WiFi. Those copies go to your own accounts, which is a plus. The developer doesn’t say whether the exported files are encrypted, and it doesn’t describe a way to move the vault to a new phone beyond exporting and importing.

The developer also doesn’t say what happens if you forget your PIN or password. We found no reset or recovery method on the listing or its own pages.

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. It’s free.
• 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 nobody can open the vault, including us. See Move Your Photo Vault to a New iPhone for the full steps.

Accounts, ads and your data

Safe Lock’s App Store privacy label says “Data Not Collected”, with nothing used to track you. The listing has no advertising note, and its version history from 2021 says the developer “Removed all third-party SDK.” That’s a clean record on paper.

The developer’s privacy policy reads differently. It says the app collects personal information when you register with Safe Lock services, including a phone number, and it mentions a call recording service. The listing and the privacy policy don’t line up on this. We couldn’t confirm whether Safe Lock needs an account.

Hidlet has no accounts, no email and no ads, and it includes no analytics or tracking code. There’s nothing to sign up for and nothing tying your vaults to your name.

Where Safe Lock is better

Safe Lock does more things, and some of them well:

• Lots of ways to unlock: seven lock types, including Face ID and Touch ID, if you don’t want to learn a pattern.
• Break-in photos, so you know if someone tried to get in.
• More than a vault: secret notes, OCR text extraction, AI image search, GIF and PDF support, and a slideshow.
• More devices: it runs on iPad and Apple Vision as well as iPhone.
• Exports to the cloud you already use, such as Dropbox or Google Drive.

Hidlet’s limits are worth knowing too. It runs on iPhone and iPad (sync between them needs Pro), there’s no Face ID unlock, and the free plan holds 3 vaults with up to 100 photos and 10 videos in each.

The bottom line

Safe Lock is a feature-rich hiding app with plenty of lock options, a fake gallery and break-in photos. But none of its pages say whether your photos are encrypted, or what to do if you forget your code. If you want photos encrypted with a key only you hold, a free way back in with a recovery phrase, and no account or ads, Hidlet is built for exactly that.

Hidlet is available on the App Store.