How to move photos to a vault app on iPhone — completely
Importing is the easy half. The other half is every copy you forgot.
1 min readLast reviewed
In short
Import the photos into the vault, check they open, delete the originals from the photo library, then empty Recently Deleted. After that, check the places copies tend to survive: shared albums, messaging apps, other cloud backups and other devices signed in to the same Apple ID.
Key takeaways
- Check the import worked before deleting anything.
- Empty Recently Deleted afterwards.
- Look for copies outside the Photos app.
The steps
- Import the photos into the vault.
- Open a few of them in the vault to check they are complete.
- Delete the originals from the photo library.
- Empty Recently Deleted.
In Latent, importing from the library offers to delete the originals and reminds you about Recently Deleted right away.
Where copies survive
- Shared albums: photos you shared stay in the album for everyone in it.
- Messaging apps: photos sent or received in chat apps are often stored separately in that app.
- Other photo backups: Google Photos, Dropbox or similar apps may have uploaded the photos already.
- Other devices: a Mac or iPad with iCloud Photos switched off keeps its own local library.
Next time
Photos taken with a vault’s own camera never reach the library, so none of this cleanup is needed.