Vault Pure 25: the limit is gone, so are two crashes, and a camera came along

25 October 2026:

After version 24 a user wrote to us: the app used to be great, but now he could barely add files, it crashed straight away, even though he has a Galaxy S24 Ultra. Luckily nothing had been deleted. He had thought about buying Pro, but first wanted to know why it crashes. A fair question.

The cause: a notice that ended the app

Since version 23 the free version held only 50 photos and videos. Once the vault was full, the import skipped the rest and meant to show a notice at the end. That notice was shown from a background thread, which Android does not allow: the app crashed instead of saying what was going on. Play Vitals counted 36 crashes for 7 users, on all kinds of devices. The S24 Ultra was not to blame.

Nothing was deleted. The crash came after the import, everything up to the limit had been saved.

Why the limit goes entirely

We could have fixed just the notice. But a cap on your own private photos does not fit a vault app, and it hit exactly the people who had been using the app the longest. It was not in the release notes for version 23 either. So photos and videos are free and unlimited again. Pro stays a one-time purchase for the decoy vault, intrusion photo, file vault, recycle bin, themes and the new camera.

The second crash

Going through Vitals turned up a second bug, older than version 23: re-sorting the album list crashed the app. The sort was written under a placeholder into a table that only knows real albums. It lives in the settings now.

New: the secure camera (Pro)

Photos straight into the vault, never through the gallery. The camera library would briefly have written an unencrypted temporary file when saving, so the app captures in memory and encrypts right away. Metadata such as phone model or location is removed. The shutter sound stays on on purpose: a camera that takes pictures in silence is a camera for photographing people who do not know it.

How we checked it

Unit tests for both crashes, and device tests on Firebase Test Lab: 60 photos through the real import, re-sorting the album list and three photos with the camera, on an Android 14 emulator and a Moto E20 running Android 11.

To be honest: whether the tests cover every path only everyday use will show. We will keep an eye on Play Vitals over the next days. And thank you for the report, it found two bugs at once.