Yes, Vaulty uses several advanced layers of security to protect your private media. Files are moved to a location, that the gallery cannot view, and are modified, so that they can’t be viewed without changing the file back. Vaulty’s protection offers the perfect balance between privacy, security and speed.
In Android 4.4 KitKat, Google removed permissions for apps to manage files on the SD card. (More on that here.) To get around this, Vaulty has to internally keep a record of which files are marked as deleted since the file itself cannot be removed. If Vaulty’s record of deleted files is reset, by a reinstall, for example, then the files that had previously been marked as deleted will reappear. To get around this and reenable full functionality in Vaulty, you can manually transfer those files on the SD card to your phone’s internal storage.
The Android system doesn’t allow apps to fully use the SD card. We’ve come up with ways to restore this functionality as much as possible:
Automatic back-up stores your files in your account’s Google Drive. If you’re subscribed to automatic back-up, you can select to store your vaulted files on the SD card in Vaulty settings. Automatic back-up is required to do this, as the files on the SD card are likely to be lost due to:
Users with rooted devices can restore SD card access to Vaulty. If Vaulty has permissions to access a storage device, then it will be listed as a location option in settings. We do not promote rooting nor can we provide instructions to root; rooting may cause device damage, data loss and void your warranty.
In Android 4.4 KitKat and up, Google made changes to improve security that disabled non-system apps from using the SD card. In other words, unless the app came built into your device, it can’t make full use of the SD card. This unfortunately means that Vaulty can no longer be stored on the SD card of your device if you’re running KitKat unless you a subscribed to online backup or if your device has been modified to enable access. SD card support was a feature we worked really hard to get right and we’re sorry that we can’t provide it as seamlessly as we’d like to anymore. We tried every way we could to get around it. If this functionality becomes available in the future, we’ll add it again. We appreciate your understanding.