Message Vault: Private Archive

About

Message Vault turns your text conversations — years of them, going back further than your phone can currently show — into a private, permanent, searchable archive that only you can open. THE COMPLETE BACKUP, DONE HONESTLY A real backup of a text thread means two things: the words, and the pictures. Message Vault keeps the words — every message, searchable, forever. Apple doesn't allow any outside app to reach the photos and videos inside Messages, so Message Vault can't copy those, and it never pretends to. Instead, it walks you through saving your photos and videos into your own Photos library — a few taps, right inside the app — and marks in every conversation where a photo or video belongs, so your searchable text becomes the index back to the picture. Your words live in Message Vault. Your pictures live in Photos. Together, that's the whole conversation, kept. YEARS OF CONVERSATIONS, ACTUALLY SEARCHABLE Messages makes it hard to search anything old and painful to get anything out. Message Vault holds everything you've archived — search by name, date, or a half-remembered phrase, and export what you find. IMPORT WITH A TAP, APPROVE EVERY BATCH Message Vault never reads your messages on its own. You run the Vault Sync shortcut yourself, and iOS shows you exactly what's being shared every time. Anything already archived is recognized and never duplicated. ENCRYPTED BEFORE IT TOUCHES ANYTHING Everything you archive is encrypted on your device with a key that lives in your iPhone's Keychain — decrypted only in memory, only for you. YOUR iCLOUD, NOT OURS Optionally keep an encrypted copy in your own Apple Account's private iCloud database. It leaves your phone only as ciphertext — there's no Message Vault server, so there's nowhere for us to read your messages. A RECOVERY PHRASE ONLY YOU HOLD Turn on recovery and you get a one-time phrase that unlocks your vault on a new iPhone. We never see it and can't recover it — that's what makes it yours. NO ACCOUNTS. NO ANALYTICS. NO SERVERS. Message Vault is a paid app on purpose, so you're the customer, not the product. GOOD TO KNOW Message Vault archives what iOS makes available to Shortcuts, typically conversations through the previous day. Sync is manual. Requires the free Shortcuts app from Apple. Message Vault is not affiliated with or endorsed by Apple Inc. iMessage and iCloud are trademarks of Apple Inc.