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Entirely on your device, encrypted with that device's secure hardware. That's true on iPhone, iPad, and Mac alike. We never receive your documents or your decryption key. There is no Kinship Vault server that holds your vault.

You can recover your vault three ways: with the recovery passphrase you wrote down at setup, by collecting recovery shards from the trusted contacts you nominated (any 3 of 5 reconstruct the vault), or, if you enabled it, via the time-locked Dead Man's Switch.

No. There's no password to reset on our side, because we never had your key. If you've lost your passphrase and your trusted-contact shards aren't reachable, your vault stays sealed forever. That's the cost of "we can't see your data" being literally true.

iCloud backup is optional. When enabled, your backup file is fully encrypted on your device before it leaves. Apple sees only encrypted bytes. Your decryption key stays on your device and is never uploaded to iCloud.

On iPhone and iPad: the camera (to scan documents) and Face ID or Touch ID (to unlock the vault).

On Mac: the camera is used for one thing only, reading the pairing QR from your other device, because the Mac has no document-scanning flow. Unlocking uses Touch ID, your Mac login password, or your PIN.

Everything is processed entirely on your device. We do not collect analytics, telemetry, or usage data.

You split your recovery key into 5 pieces and share them with people you trust. Each shard is shown as a QR code, exported as a small file, or printed as a PDF "shard card." Any 3 of 5 reconstruct your vault. No single person can unlock it alone, including you.

Yes. On the device that already has your vault, open Settings → Link a New Device and scan the QR with the other device. The same vault is live on both. Setup takes under a minute, and the steps are the same whether the second device is an iPad or a Mac.

1. On the device that already holds your vault, open Settings, then Unlock PIN & Recovery, then choose Link a New Device.
2. Authenticate with Face ID or Touch ID. A QR appears with a 60-second countdown. On an iPhone or iPad, iOS blocks that QR from screenshots and screen recording, so it cannot leak through the system. On a Mac it cannot: macOS gives apps no way to block screen capture, so if the Mac is the device showing the code, the app warns you on screen and you should not capture it.
3. On the new device, open Kinship Vault and choose Bring My Vault. It appears on the welcome screen on a fresh install, or in the Recovery row of the unlock screen if you already have something set up.
4. Point the new device's camera at the QR. An iPad uses its camera; a Mac uses its built-in camera, so just hold the first device up to the screen. The vault key transfers directly between the two devices through that on-screen code. Nothing routes through our servers.
5. The new device wraps the key in its own secure hardware and unlocks the same vault.

Going forward, push a backup to iCloud whenever you add or edit documents. Backups are encrypted with your key before they leave the device, so neither we nor Apple can read them; iCloud only stores the encrypted bytes.

An optional inactivity-triggered recovery. If you don't open the app for a configurable number of days (default 365 with a 30-day grace period), a final shard is released to the contacts you nominated, allowing them to access your vault. You disable or extend it at any time from Settings.

It runs on iPhone and iPad only. The feature depends on check-in reminders arriving reliably over months, which a desktop app that may sit closed for weeks cannot promise, so it is not offered on the Mac. Set it up on your iPhone; it protects the same vault.

Drag a PDF or an image onto the window, or pull one in from Photos or Files. There is no camera-scanning flow on the Mac, so importing is how documents get in.

Everything else is the same: the same on-device recognition reads the fields across the same 100+ document types, and the file is encrypted before it touches storage. Nothing is uploaded for processing.

No. It's a single universal purchase. Whatever you own, a subscription or Lifetime Premium, carries across iPhone, iPad, and Mac on the same Apple Account. Download it on the Mac and it's already unlocked.

If your Mac doesn't recognize the purchase, open the App Store app, choose Store → Reload Page, and make sure you're signed in with the same Apple Account you bought it on.