Fifth Pocket vs Keepsafe
Keepsafe is the app most people mean when they say "photo vault". It has been on the App Store since 2012, has around 385,000 ratings at 4.7 stars, and does a great deal: PIN and Face ID lock, a decoy PIN, a private cloud with sync across devices, break-in alerts, a fake "crash" screen, and more. If you want the biggest feature list in the category, it is still the one to look at.
This page is about the other half of the picture. We pulled the 1,000 most recent reviews of Keepsafe on the US and UK App Stores and read them. 443 of them, 44%, were one or two stars. The 4.7 headline is the average of thirteen years; the recent reviews describe a different app.
What recent reviews say
| Complaint | Share of 1–2★ reviews | What people describe |
|---|---|---|
| Photos missing or lost | 33% (40% of 2026 reviews) | "The new update deleted everything I had." Albums showing covers but no contents. Videos that will not play after an update. Items "about to be deleted" unless the app is updated. |
| Problems after an update | 23% (29% in 2026) | The word "update" appears in a quarter of all negative reviews. The pattern is the same each time: it worked, it updated, something was gone or broken. |
| Billing and premium | 23% | Features moving behind Premium; confusion over which of the nine listed in-app purchases they bought; charges after cancelling. |
| Crashes and freezing | 17% | "Crashes 5 seconds into opening it." "Will not stay open." |
| Account, login and verification | 11% | Codes not arriving, locked out of an account that holds the photos. |
| Support | 10% | "Weeks of contacting", "no response". |
The trend matters more than any single number. In our sample, one- and two-star reviews were 26 of 51 in 2024, 85 of 194 in 2025, and 175 of 387 so far in 2026.
Where the difference is
| Keepsafe | Fifth Pocket | |
|---|---|---|
| Encryption | Listing says "military-grade encryption"; files are stored encrypted. The cipher and key handling are not published. | AES-256-GCM, key derived from your pattern. Design published. |
| Account | Needed for sync and Private Cloud. | None. No email, no login. |
| Where your photos are | Device, plus Keepsafe's cloud on Premium. | Device, plus encrypted copies in your iCloud. We never hold them. |
| If you forget your code | Account recovery by email, which is what makes the account necessary. | Recovery key you save at setup. No account needed for it. |
| What an update can do to your photos | See above. | Encrypted files are plain files in your iCloud container. An app update cannot move or migrate them; the export button works regardless of app version. |
| Price | Monthly $9.99, yearly $23.99, plus several other tiers listed. | Free up to 50 items, then one lifetime unlock. One price. |
| Ads | Free tier shows ads. | None. |
| Decoy PIN, break-in alerts, fake crash screen | Yes. | Not at launch. |
| Years on the App Store | 13. | 0. We are honest about that. |
Fifth Pocket is coming to iPhone. Real encryption, a recovery key so you can't be locked out, and one price you pay once. Want to know the day it's out?
Tell me when it's out Opens an email to us. One reply when the app launches, nothing else.If you are leaving Keepsafe
Get your photos out first, before you uninstall anything. In Keepsafe, select the items you want, choose Unhide (or Export) to send them back to the Photos app, and check they are all there before you delete them from Keepsafe. Do this in batches if you have thousands; the reviews describe exports stalling on large albums. If items show as empty albums or will not open, check Keepsafe's Trash in Settings and its own recovery article before assuming they are gone.
Once they are back in Photos, any vault can import them. When Fifth Pocket launches, the import is one tap from the Photos picker, and the originals are removed from Photos only after the encrypted copies are confirmed written and backed up.
When Keepsafe is still the right choice
If you want cross-device sync, a decoy PIN, or break-in photos, Keepsafe has them and we don't. If you are happy on a subscription and have had no trouble, there is no reason to move. This page is for the people who have.
Sources
- Keepsafe on the App Store — rating, rating count, in-app purchase list, description. Read 20 October 2026.
- App Store reviews, US and UK storefronts, 500 most recent each, collected 20 October 2026. Percentages are of the 443 reviews rated one or two stars. Quotes are verbatim from public reviews.
- Keepsafe support — recovering items from Trash.
Keepsafe is a trademark of KeepSafe Software, Inc. Fifth Pocket is not affiliated with it. If anything here is wrong or out of date, email hello@fifthpocket.app and we will correct it.