A second pattern for when you're forced to open it

Saying "I don't have anything" is hard to defend when a vault app is on your Home Screen. Opening a vault that looks used is far more convincing.

1. In your real vault: Vault settings › Set up panic pattern. Draw your current pattern, then the new panic pattern twice.
2. VaultCube creates the decoy. It has the same name as your vault and, if you want, ten harmless sample photos dated over past months.
3. At the unlock screen, the panic pattern opens the decoy like any vault. There's no badge, no different screen and no delay.
4. You can add your own innocent photos to the decoy so it looks lived in.

• Every vault's key slot looks the same. The key file always has 32 slots of the same size; unused ones are random bytes.
• Nothing lists or counts vaults. Free-plan limits are counted per vault for exactly this reason.
• The decoy knows nothing about your real vault. Only your real vault remembers the decoy, so you can change or remove it.
• Wrong patterns all fail the same way, so the unlock screen reveals nothing about how many vaults there are.

Once your real vault has an encrypted iCloud backup, you can choose "Decoy + remove other vaults." Opening the decoy then wipes the other vaults from the phone. Later, you bring them back with your recovery phrase. "Pause backups after use" pauses automatic backups until your real pattern is drawn again.

• Forensic access to the app's files could show that more data is stored than the open vault displays, and your iCloud shows that vault backups exist.
• A decoy only helps if you draw it calmly. Practise it once.
• Panic patterns are a Pro feature.