Arca's lifetime unlock is set to $0 in the App Store right now. Last time I'm doing this one.

Arca is a photo vault for iPhone. Your photos and videos sit in an encrypted vault on the device. No account, no server, nothing syncing anywhere.

I built it because most "hidden photos" apps annoy me. They move your pictures into a folder, put a passcode screen in front, call it done. The files are still sitting there in the clear. Plug the phone into a computer or go poking through a backup and there they are.

Arca encrypts every photo, video and thumbnail with AES-256 before anything touches disk. No plaintext copy anywhere, including cached thumbnails and the temp files most apps leave lying around during video playback. If you unlock with Face ID, the key lives in the Secure Enclave, so it's tied to that specific phone and re-enrolling a face kills it.

[https://arca.page](https://arca.page)

What's in it:

* 6-digit PIN, or Face ID
* A camera built into the app that shoots straight into the vault. Photos never land in your camera roll at all.
* A disguised app icon, if you'd rather it not announce itself on your home screen
* A decoy vault on a second PIN, for the situation where someone is standing over you
* Break-in photos of whoever gets the PIN wrong
* Auto-lock, and a blurred preview in the app switcher
* Location data stripped when you share a photo back out
* Save from Link: paste a link to a video on the web and it downloads into the vault, encrypted on arrival. Doesn't pass through your camera roll or Files on the way. Works from the share sheet too.
* Albums, favorites, and a gallery that isn't slow
* Encrypted backup to Files or iCloud Drive
* Lossless export of your originals, always free. If you want out, you leave with everything.

Most people seem to use it for the obvious personal stuff, plus passports and ID cards, screenshots they don't want turning up in Memories, and the general awkwardness of handing your phone to someone who then keeps swiping.



To claim:

1. Download: [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/private-photo-vault-arca/id6779157571](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/private-photo-vault-arca/id6779157571)
2. Open the paywall, pick Lifetime, it's $0
3. That's it. It stays yours after the price goes back up.



One thing I'd want to know if I were reading this: the vault is fully offline, but the link saver obviously has to hit the network to go get a video. Most links get parsed on the phone. The rest go through a resolver I run myself. Either way the video is encrypted on your device the moment it arrives, and nothing else in the app talks to anything.



Solo dev, so feedback lands directly on the person who can do something about it. Happy to get into the crypto design if anyone's curious.



[iOS] [99.99$ -> Free Lifetime] Arca - Private Photo Vault & Tiktok, Reels Video Downloader