Hidlet vs Secret Photo Vault Lock Photos: Locked or Encrypted?

Hidlet is an iPhone app

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Search the App Store for “Secret Photo Vault” and you’ll find a whole row of look-alike names. This page is about one of the biggest: Secret Photo Vault Lock Photos, by the developer 伟林 莫, with more than 27,000 ratings. It isn’t Keepsafe’s app, which is listed as “Secret Photo Vault: Keepsafe”.

It’s a straightforward album app: lock it with a dot lock, a password or Face ID, and sort photos into folders. This comparison sets it beside Hidlet, using only what its own App Store listing and privacy policy say. The developer has no website linked on the listing, so those are the only two sources.

Checked on 25 October 2026, against Secret Photo Vault Lock Photos 8.3.8 on the US App Store.

The short version

A password on the album, or a key on every photo

Secret Photo Vault Lock Photos gives you plenty of ways to lock the door: a dot lock, a password, Touch ID or Face ID. You can also give each user or category its own password.

What the developer doesn’t say is how the photos are stored behind that door. The listing and the privacy policy never mention encryption. The only storage statement is that “all of your data in this app is stored only in your device”. That’s good to know, but it’s about where the photos live, not how they’re protected.

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

Hidlet uses a pattern, and the pattern does more than open a screen:

• 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?

Decoys and separate collections

This is where the two apps are closest. Secret Photo Vault Lock Photos offers decoy accounts, each with its own decoy database, “to conceal your privacy”, as the listing puts it. It also has separate users or categories, each behind its own password, plus a public folder shared across them. You open a decoy by entering its password on the Admin account, and the app then shows only the decoy database.

In Hidlet, different patterns open different vaults, 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. Read more about how hidden vaults stay invisible.

Backup, new phones and forgotten passwords

Secret Photo Vault Lock Photos describes no cloud backup. Its data stays on your device, and you move files around yourself:

• Wi-Fi access from a computer, for downloading and uploading
• USB import and export through iTunes File Sharing
• Export to your Photos library, or sharing by email or MMS

If you forget your password, the listing says a question and answer “for password resetting” can be added, optionally. It doesn’t explain what happens if you skipped that step.

Hidlet keeps the key with you and backs up for 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 the vault can’t be opened by anyone, including us. More in encrypted backup.

Ads and your data

The developer’s own pages leave this unclear. The privacy policy, last edited in May 2019, says “Photo Vault uses AdMob as ads provider”. The App Store privacy label says “Data Not Collected”, and the listing doesn’t carry Apple’s “Contains Advertising” label. We couldn’t confirm whether today’s app shows ads.

On accounts, the privacy policy is clear: “we do not require the consumers to get registered”.

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

Where Secret Photo Vault Lock Photos is better

It has real strengths:

• More than photos: a file manager for PDFs and Office files, a voice recorder and text notes.
• Familiar unlock: a password, Touch ID or Face ID, if you’d rather not draw a pattern. Hidlet has no Face ID or PIN; it opens only with a pattern.
• Simple pricing: one “Pro Version” in-app purchase at $6.99, and no subscription terms on the listing.
• More devices: iPhone, iPad, Apple silicon Macs and Apple Vision.
• A long track record: more than 27,000 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. It has no file manager or voice recorder.

The bottom line

Secret Photo Vault Lock Photos is a simple, well-used album app, and its decoy accounts are a good idea. But the developer doesn’t say whether your photos are encrypted, it describes no cloud backup, and its privacy pages leave it unclear whether it shows ads. If you want each photo encrypted with a key only you hold, backed up encrypted to your own iCloud, Hidlet is built for exactly that.

Hidlet is available on the App Store.