Privately vs Valv

Privately is an iPhone vault for photos and videos, with media encrypted on the device. It splits files into 1 MB blocks protected by AES-256-GCM, while the user’s PIN wraps a master key stored in the iPhone Secure Enclave. Albums can have separate passwords, and their locked photos disappear from the timeline, search, and favorites; Face ID unlocking is optional. On-device Smart Search can find text in photos in 18 languages without sending the photos off the iPhone. Users can export a.privately backup and restore it on a new device with their PIN; the maker says backups can be kept in iCloud Drive or elsewhere. The maker says it has no accounts or servers holding photos, file names, or thumbnails. The Free plan costs nothing, with no sign-up required. Pro Yearly costs $39.99 a year and includes locked albums and encrypted backups. The yearly subscription has a 7-day free trial; the weekly subscription has no free trial. The app is only for iPhone and requires iOS 18.0 or later. The maker says forgotten PIN access or losing a device without a backup can mean permanent content loss.

Valv is a free Android gallery vault for storing photos, GIFs, videos, and text files in encrypted form on a device. Files can be arranged into folders, with notes or text attached, and separate vaults can use different passwords. Access supports a password or PIN; one vault can also be unlocked with fingerprint or face authentication. Valv uses ChaCha20 encryption and derives keys with PBKDF2 and HMAC-SHA512. PBKDF2 uses 50,000 iterations by default, and that count can be changed. Encrypted files remain on local storage, supporting backups and transfers between devices, but cloud backup is not available. The project README says the app requires no permissions, while Google Play declares no data collected and no data shared with third parties. Valv requires Android 9.0 or newer and is listed at free. It is distributed through Google Play, F-Droid, and a GitHub APK, under GPL-3.0-only.