Is a locked note safe enough for what you are storing?

A quick way to judge whether Apple's locked notes are enough for a password, a medical detail or a private journal, and when a separate vault fits better.

Locked notes are free, built in and good enough for a lot of things. The useful question is who you are worried about.

Run through your situation

A kid or friend grabbing your phone. Either locking method works. They do not know your passcode, and the note asks for it.

A partner who knows your passcode. Use a custom password, since a device passcode lock opens for them. If someone can watch you enter it, a custom password has the same weakness.

Someone who gets into your iCloud account. Apple says locked notes use end-to-end encryption for iCloud accounts, which raises the bar well above an ordinary note.

You forget. Apple cannot help you regain access to notes locked with a forgotten custom password. Write it down.

Where locked notes fall short

• The title stays visible in your notes list.
• Notes with video, audio, PDF or file attachments cannot be locked, nor can Quick Notes or notes with tags.
• Notes that sync with Gmail or Yahoo accounts cannot be locked.
• Unlocking one note opens all the locked notes in that account for several minutes.
• It cannot hold your photo collection. You would be pasting them one at a time.

When a vault fits better

Choose a vault when you want photos, files and text kept together behind a single separate secret. Backroom notes are encrypted the same way as its photos, and they sit in whichever vault you opened, so someone would need that vault’s pattern to know the note exists. There is no title list outside the vault.

In exchange, Backroom notes stay on one iPhone, and you take care of the recovery phrase yourself. If you want to reach a note on your Mac, Apple’s locked notes are the better tool. Plenty of people should just use those. This guide has an interactive walkthrough.