Vaultaire.app VS ShellNewHandler

Vaultaire.app's answer

Most vault apps hide photos behind a PIN and store them unencrypted on disk. Copy the app's storage and you see everything. Vaultaire encrypts each file individually with AES-256-GCM and per-file initialization vectors. There's no account to subpoena, no server holding your data, and no way to distinguish a wrong unlock from an empty vault. Keepsafe requires your email and stores photos on their servers. Apple's Hidden Album is discoverable and unencrypted in backups. Vaultaire is the only vault app where the architecture itself makes hidden content unprovable.

Vaultaire.app's answer

Vaultaire encrypts every file with AES-256-GCM using a pattern you draw on a 5x5 grid. That pattern is the encryption key. No passwords, no PINs, no biometrics. Enter the wrong pattern and you see an empty vault, not an error message. There's no way to tell the difference between "wrong pattern" and "nothing stored here." Each pattern opens a completely separate vault. A designated duress pattern silently wipes your other vaults while looking like normal cooperation. No account, no cloud dependency, no data collection. I can't access your files even if I wanted to. The architecture won't let me.

Vaultaire.app's answer

iPhone users who get that "hidden" and "encrypted" are different things. Privacy-conscious professionals, journalists protecting sources, travelers crossing borders where device inspection is routine, people in controlling relationships where deniability is safety, and anyone who's handed their phone to someone and felt that moment of worry. Generally 22-45, people who'd rather pay for real privacy than use something ad-funded.

Vaultaire.app's answer

I'm Rasty Turek, ex-Google, and I spent most of my career in data infrastructure and security at scale. After building companies in the security and content-attribution space, I wanted to build an encrypted vault that does what most vault apps only pretend to do: actually encrypt your files, not just hide them behind a PIN screen. The duress vault, where a specific pattern silently wipes your other vaults under coercion, exists because I kept thinking about the people who need this most. Journalists, activists, abuse survivors, travelers at hostile borders. It's a one-person project on purpose. Fewer people with access means a smaller attack surface.

Vaultaire.app's answer

Swift and SwiftUI for the iOS app. Apple CryptoKit for AES-256-GCM file encryption. Apple Secure Enclave for hardware-backed key generation. PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA512 for key derivation at roughly 600,000 iterations. CloudKit for optional encrypted backup and vault sharing. The marketing site runs on Eleventy, deployed to Cloudflare Pages.

Vaultaire.app's answer

Vaultaire has zero-knowledge architecture, so I genuinely don't know who my users are. I don't track them and I don't collect personal data. But based on support emails and App Store reviews, the user base breaks down roughly like this: - Privacy-conscious professionals keeping sensitive work on personal devices - Journalists and activists in environments where phone searches happen - Travelers crossing borders with mandatory device inspection - People in difficult personal situations where deniability is a safety issue - Parents who want actual encryption, not a hidden folder - People who tried another vault app and realized it's just a PIN screen over unencrypted files