PVC · iPhone app · iOS 17+
An everyday calculator with backspace, and a local vault for your photos, videos, and documents. Enter your six-digit PIN, then tap = to open your albums.
PVC–Private Vault & Calculator by Arkavix. Home Screen name: PVC.
Use the calculator for everyday calculations, then open your media with your PIN.
The vault opens to Albums. Tap an album to see its photos, videos, and files, or choose the All Media album tile to browse your full library.
Swipe left for the next item or right for the previous one, including files. Pinch to zoom into photos; view documents with PDF preview or iOS Quick Look.
Use a six-digit PIN, or optionally enable Face ID and hold = to authenticate. A separate decoy PIN opens a separate gallery.
Export selected photos and videos back to Apple Photos. To back up all your media, documents, and albums together, create a manual encrypted vault backup in Settings.
Touch and hold an item to select it without opening it. Select All selects the whole open album, including offscreen items. Delete asks for explicit confirmation, then removes the full selection while keeping unselected items.
Tap the top + button to choose Camera, Photo Library, or Choose Files in Apple’s native action sheet.
Camera opens Apple’s native camera to take a photo or record a video. Camera permission is required; recording video with sound also uses microphone permission. Captures save directly to your vault, not to Apple Photos, so there is no Photos original to delete.
With an existing vault, the default quick-camera shortcut is two quick taps on % within 10 seconds after the app gains focus, while the calculator is idle at 0. It opens Apple’s native camera for photos only, with camera permission.
The new photo saves to the real vault’s All Media without unlocking the vault or reading or displaying existing media. It is not added to Photos, and the shortcut does not use the microphone. Backgrounding the app cancels the trigger and any pending quick capture.
Open the real vault’s Settings to choose the shortcut key and tap count, or disable quick camera. Captures are stored locally and are not sent to Arkavix.
The share button in the viewer and the bottom toolbar for selected items both open Apple’s native iOS share sheet for photos, videos and documents. Choose an available destination or save action there; PVC does not automatically save shared items to Photos.
Choose Files opens the system document picker to import PDF, text/Markdown, CSV, RTF, and common Office and OpenDocument files: doc, docx, xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx, odt, ods, and odp. Files are stored in your albums and included in encrypted vault backups.
Importing from Files saves and verifies each selected file in PVC, then automatically deletes its original from Files. If the source changes or the file provider does not allow deletion, PVC keeps it and reports this inline. Photos imports use the separate iOS confirmation below.
Photo Library opens Apple’s native Photos picker. PVC verifies selected photos and videos with SHA-256 before committing them to its local catalog. It then automatically asks Apple Photos to remove eligible, verified originals. iOS requires Photos permission and your confirmation in its Delete dialog.
Failed, edited, burst, compound, changed, or inaccessible originals are retained. Live Photos import as still images only; their motion is not kept.
Deleted originals can remain in Photos’ Recently Deleted for up to 30 days. If you use iCloud Photos, deletion can also propagate to your other synced devices.
After an import, a brief inline saved status disappears automatically. Warnings about failed imports or retained originals and retry controls appear inline; open details only when you want them.
Open Settings → Export & Import Vault → Vault Backup and tap Export encrypted ZIP. PVC packages all photos, videos, documents, and albums in the currently open vault, preserving the original file bytes stored there, into an encrypted .pvcvault payload inside a standard .zip file. AES-256-GCM and PBKDF2 protect the inner payload. The outer ZIP itself is not password-encrypted.
Exports use the current PIN of the vault you have open. After a PIN unlock, there is no extra PIN field or separate backup PIN to choose. After Face ID, PVC may ask for the current vault PIN once for that unlocked session because stored verifiers cannot recover it. The active PIN is kept only in revocable unlocked-session memory and is cleared on lock.
Save or share the ZIP through iOS Files or the share sheet, including as an email attachment. You choose the destination, which can include iCloud Drive or another provider. This is a manual backup, with no automatic cloud sync or developer backend.
To restore on this device or another device after setup, open the same Vault Backup screen. Tap Choose ZIP or vault file, select a ZIP or raw .pvcvault file, then tap Import vault. PVC first tries the current vault PIN. If needed, enter the PIN used when exported. Verified media, documents, and albums are added to the current vault without replacing existing content.
Changing the vault PIN affects future exports, not existing archives. Older archives need the PIN used for that export; legacy backups created with a separate PIN still need their original separate PIN.
You can export either your real vault or your decoy vault by opening it first. Each archive covers only the currently open vault and excludes the other gallery, the PIN itself, recovery codes, and security logs. Stored credentials remain verifiers. Arkavix cannot recover a forgotten export PIN.
PVC uses the iOS app sandbox, Data Protection, and Keychain. The app’s vault PIN controls access inside PVC; it does not separately encrypt the live vault files. Exported .pvcvault payloads are encrypted separately using the vault PIN current at export time.
You can optionally enable a front-camera break-in photo after each group of three wrong PIN attempts. Camera permission is required and iOS shows its camera indicator. Break-in photos do not use the microphone or record audio. Photos and attempt events stay on the device; microphone access is only used for video with sound that you choose to record through Camera.
Keep the archive and the PIN used for its export safe. Vault media and documents are excluded from automatic device backups. Deleting PVC or losing your device loses unbacked content. A saved archive and its export-time PIN can restore the files and albums it contains. A recovery code only restores access to an existing vault; it does not restore files or unlock archives.
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