Does deleting a vault app delete the photos inside it?

It is a reasonable worry. You tap and hold an app, tap Delete, and a second later you wonder what went with it. If the app was a vault, the answer matters a lot.

What the phone does when you delete an app

On iPhone, deleting an app removes it and its data from the phone. The help page makes one exception: data the app stored in iCloud, such as photos or documents, isn’t deleted along with the app. There is also offloading, which frees the space used by the app but keeps its documents and data. Offloading isn’t the same as deleting.

On Android, deleting an app removes it. The help page notes that archiving an app removes the app data while keeping the icon, so archiving is not a safe way to “pause” a vault. Clearing an app’s storage also deletes all its data.

In both cases, the app’s own storage is where a vault keeps its files. Delete the app, and that storage goes.

What can save your photos

A vault’s photos survive deleting the app only if a copy exists elsewhere:

• An export you made earlier, as ordinary files in a folder.
• A backup that the app can restore from. That could be a copy in your own cloud account, or in the company’s cloud.
• The original still sitting in your photo library, if you never removed it.

The phone’s own backup may not help. Apps decide whether their data is included in a device backup. Some vault apps leave themselves out, so that readable data isn’t copied to places you can’t control. If a backup does include the app, restoring it can bring the data back on a new phone, but you can’t count on that.

Some apps also lose their photos in the other direction: an update fails, a phone restores half-way, or storage is cleared. That is why a copy outside the app matters even when you don’t plan to delete anything.

Before you delete a vault app

1. Find the export. Look in the app’s settings for “export” or “save”.
2. Export a small sample first and open the files on the phone. Do they look right and are they full size?
3. Export the lot. Choose a folder with enough room. See export photos from a vault app.
4. Remember that exported files are not protected. Anyone who can open that folder can see them. Put them somewhere private, or move them into another vault.
5. Only then delete the app.

If you are changing phones rather than leaving the app, see move your vault to a new phone.

How to tell what your app does

Open the app’s help or settings and look for a line about deleting. A good app says this plainly. Silo’s behavior is stated in advance: the vault lives only in the app’s own storage, so uninstalling removes it on both platforms, and the phone’s own backup doesn’t copy it. Export first, or keep a backup. Silo, which is coming soon, exports on every plan for free, and backup to your own cloud storage is arriving with launch.

If the app says nothing at all, treat that as a warning sign. Are photo vault apps safe lists more of them.