Private Camera: Photos That Never Touch Camera Roll

The private camera in sigil. takes photos straight into an encrypted vault. They never appear in the Camera Roll, never enter your Photos library, never upload to iCloud Photos, and never show up in Memories or widgets. There is no "take it, then hide it" step, so there is no moment when the photo is exposed.

Why "take it, then hide it" is the weak spot

The normal way to keep a photo private on iPhone is to take it with the Camera app, then move it to the Hidden album or into a vault app. That workflow has gaps:

• The library sees it first. The photo lands in Recents. If iCloud Photos is on, it can start uploading within seconds.
• The original lingers. Importing into a vault app usually copies the photo; the original remains in Photos until you delete it, and then in Recently Deleted for up to 30 days.
• Photos indexes it. Faces, text, and objects are analyzed for search and Memories.
• It is easy to forget. One forgotten photo in Recents undoes the effort.

Our guide on taking photos without saving to the Camera Roll covers the built-in workarounds, and why each is partial.

How the private camera works

1. Open sigil. and draw the sign for the vault you want.
2. Open the camera from inside that vault.
3. Take the photo. It is encrypted and written into that vault.

Nothing is handed to the Photos library at any point. The photo is protected with the same 256-bit encryption and the same sign-unlocked key as everything else in the vault; see pattern encryption.

Location and other EXIF metadata are stripped on import and export, so when you later share a photo out of the vault it does not carry GPS coordinates, device details, or similar data.

What it is good for

• Medical photos — symptoms, wounds, prescriptions. See medical photos.
• Documents — passports, IDs, insurance cards, contracts. See ID documents.
• Personal photos — without risking a Featured Photo on your Home Screen.
• Work material — whiteboards, prototypes, anything covered by confidentiality.
• Evidence you want to keep, without it appearing in a shared family library.

What iOS offers natively

iOS has no built-in "private capture" mode for the Camera app. The closest options:

• Turn off iCloud Photos temporarily before taking the photo, then hide or delete it. This affects your whole library. See stopping photos from syncing to iCloud.
• Scan into Notes. Document scans made inside Notes stay in the note, not in Photos, and the note can be locked. It is designed for documents, not general photos.
• Turn off location for Camera. Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > Camera > Never prevents GPS data from being recorded in new photos.

These help, but none gives you encrypted, library-free photos with a key separate from your passcode.

Honest limits

• Local-first, no cloud backup yet. Photos in the vault live on your iPhone. If the phone is lost, so is the vault. Back up anything irreplaceable separately; see backing up private photos securely.
• The free plan holds 100 photos and documents and 10 videos per vault, in 1 vault plus the decoy vault, with every feature included. Pro adds unlimited photos and videos and up to 7 vaults.
• Exported means unencrypted. When you export a photo to Photos or share it, that copy is outside the vault. sigil. warns you before it happens.
• Screenshots. Taking a screenshot of a photo inside any app saves that screenshot to Photos like any other screenshot.
• The scene itself. Stripping metadata removes hidden data, not what is visible. Faces, street signs, and reflections can still reveal a lot.

A simple workflow for existing photos

If you already have sensitive photos in your library, the camera only fixes the future. For the past:

1. Import the photos into a vault. Metadata is stripped on the way in.
2. Delete the originals from Photos.
3. Open Recently Deleted and delete them there too, otherwise they remain for up to 30 days.
4. If iCloud Photos is on, the deletion syncs to your other devices; confirm they are gone there as well.

From then on, use the private camera for anything you would otherwise hide later.

Checking your existing photos

If you have private photos already in your library, check what they contain with the in-browser photo metadata viewer, and strip location before sharing with the EXIF remover. Both run entirely in your browser.