Forgot your photo vault password? What you can and cannot do
Before anything else: do not delete the app.
In short
First, do not delete the app — on iPhone, deleting an app deletes its data. Then look for the recovery option the app gave you at setup: a recovery phrase, a recovery key or an email reset. A vault that is truly end-to-end encrypted cannot be opened without either the code or the recovery phrase; nobody can bypass that, including its developer.
Key takeaways
- Deleting the app usually deletes the vault with it.
- Look for a recovery phrase or key from setup.
- An email reset means the vault was never only yours.
What not to do
- Do not delete and reinstall the app. Its data is deleted with it.
- Do not restore the iPhone from an old backup before you know whether the vault was in it.
- Do not pay a “recovery service” that claims it can open any vault.
What to try, in order
- Patterns and codes you used elsewhere, including older ones.
- The recovery option offered at setup: phrase, key or email.
- The app’s own support page, to learn which recovery the app actually offers.
Why some vaults truly cannot be reset
If a vault encrypts files with a key derived from your code, and stores that key nowhere else, then without the code the files are mathematically unreadable. That is the whole point of encryption. The recovery phrase exists for exactly this moment.
In Latent
Each vault has a nine-word recovery phrase, shown and checked when you create it. With it, you can open the vault again or restore it on a new iPhone. Without both the pattern and the phrase, nobody can open it.