Help & FAQ

From the Vault tab, tap the + button in the bottom-right corner and choose New Note or New Photo. Add your content and tap Save — if you have not picked a deletion time for a new note yet, the timer sheet opens first so you can choose one. Your item is then encrypted and added to the vault.

Settings → Restart App Intro. The first-run screens come back on your next launch, including the default delete time choice and a fresh welcome note. Nothing already in your vault is removed.

Every item has a built-in expiry. Once the timer runs out, the item is permanently and irrecoverably deleted — both from the vault and from device storage. The free timers are 60 minutes, 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days, and Never; Deletable Plus adds the finer steps between them, custom durations, and an exact date and time.

Yes. Open the item and tap the clock-arrow button at the top of the screen to choose a new delete time — it saves straight away. To change several at once, long-press a card, choose Select, tap the others, and use the extend button in the header.

Go to Settings → Security → Lock App and toggle it on, then choose a method. Face ID / Touch ID (fingerprint on Android) falls back to your device passcode if biometrics fail. Passcode sets a separate 4-digit code just for Deletable, which you can change later under Change Passcode. Lock After sets how long the app waits in the background before re-locking.

⌘N and ⌘⇧N create a note or photo, ⌘F opens search, ⌘1 / ⌘2 / ⌘3 switch between Vault, Stats and Settings, ⌘E shares, ⌘A selects all while multiselecting, ⌘⌫ deletes the selection (the confirmation prompt still appears), and Esc leaves selection mode.

No. Deletion is permanent and irrecoverable by design. Once an item expires or you delete it manually, there is no backup and no recovery path. This is a core privacy feature, not a bug. If you want to keep something before its timer fires, long-press the card and choose Save a Copy to export it to Files or your Camera Roll.

It still gets deleted. Expired items are purged when you launch the app, every time you bring it back to the foreground, and by a background task in between — so an expired item is always gone before you can see it. The background pass is what gets it off disk sooner rather than what makes deletion work: iOS schedules that kind of task opportunistically, so gaps of a day or more between background runs are normal and harmless.

Settings shows a "Background Deleting" row that reports when the sweep last completed, and warns you if it has been quiet for more than a week. It reports what actually happened rather than asking the OS a question the OS cannot answer — which also covers every possible cause at once: Background App Refresh being off, Low Power Mode, or iOS deprioritising an app you rarely open.

Yes, if you enable Expiration Notifications in Settings. You'll get a push notification ahead of deletion, at whichever lead times you pick — 1, 5 or 10 minutes, an hour, or a day before — set globally or per item. Every reminder carries Keep 24 More Hours and Delete Now buttons, so you can decide right there.

Settings → Erase Vault deletes every note, photo and folder in one action, along with the encrypted files, scheduled notifications and live geofences. It sits behind a two-step confirmation that names the exact item and folder counts. Your stats and achievement tier are deliberately kept — wiping a vault shouldn't inflate your lifetime deletion count or vault you several tiers for pressing one button.

Yes. Every note and photo is encrypted with AES-256-GCM before being written to the local SQLite database. GCM is authenticated, which means damaged or tampered data throws an error instead of silently decoding to garbage that gets shown to you as though it were your note. Your master key is stored in the iOS Keychain or the Android Keystore and never leaves your device.

There is no reset and no recovery — nobody, including us, can unlock your vault for you. Failed attempts are throttled: four free tries, then a 30 second, 1, 5, 15 and 30 minute ladder that survives a force-quit. That ladder is capped at 30 minutes, so a wrong clock or a corrupted record can never lock you out for longer than the ladder itself allows. Biometric failures are not throttled, since the OS already rate-limits those.

No. A stored photo carries no EXIF at all — no GPS coordinates, no capture timestamp, no device model. Every import and capture is re-encoded on the way in, so the original file's bytes never reach the vault. A test pins that behaviour specifically so a future "keep original quality" option couldn't restore it silently.

Your vault content never leaves your device. Deletable syncs only anonymous, aggregated statistics (item counts, bytes freed) to our Supabase backend — tied to a random UUID, never your identity. And you can switch that off entirely.

Yes — Settings → Privacy → Anonymous Usage Stats. With it off, the app makes no network requests at all. Turning it off also discards any payload already queued for retry, so nothing built while you had it on gets released later.

When analytics is on: fully anonymous counts — items created and deleted, bytes freed, current tier, vault totals, app opens, and which features are used. These are linked to a random device UUID generated at first launch, not your name, Apple ID, Google account, or any identifying information. See our Privacy Policy for full details.

Yes. iOS blurs your vault in the app-switcher preview, and Android blanks it in Recents. You can also turn on Settings → Privacy → Blur Vault Preview to hide note text and photo thumbnails on the vault cards until you open them. Expiry notifications never name your item on either platform — the alert reads "A note or photo deletes in 5 minutes" rather than saying what it is.

On purpose. Deletable blocks screen capture for as long as the app is open, on iOS and Android — screenshots and recordings come out blank, so nothing in your vault can be captured by you, a screen-recording app, or anything else on the device. To keep a copy of something, long-press its card and choose Save a Copy.

Importing makes an encrypted copy in the vault; Deletable never gets access to your photo library, so it cannot remove the original. Delete it from Photos yourself if you want it gone. Photos taken with Deletable's own camera (+ → New Photo → Take Photo) never reach your Camera Roll in the first place.

All vault content is stored locally and will be removed with the app. The anonymous UUID stored in Supabase will become orphaned but contains no data that can identify you.

No. Deletable uses an anonymous device ID stored in secure storage to track your stats. On both iOS and Android, this ID is lost when the app is deleted — on iOS, the Keychain is cleared when the last app from a developer is removed; on Android, secure storage is always wiped on uninstall. There is no account system, so there is currently no way to recover your stats and tier progress after deleting the app.

$0.99 a month, $9.99 a year, or $19.99 once for lifetime access. You buy it inside the app under Settings → Deletable Plus, through your App Store account — there is still no sign-up and no account with us.

Precise and custom expiry timers, an exact date-and-time picker, location-triggered deletion, unlimited folders, folder self-destruct timers, custom note fonts and text colours, the expiry-habit breakdown and delete pace on the Stats tab, the Paper / Midnight / Raccoon stat card themes, and the alternate app icons.

Everything that protects your data: AES-256-GCM encryption, biometric and passcode lock, the app-switcher blur, redacted notifications, EXIF-free photos, and the analytics opt-out. Plus the free expiry ladder, up to 2 folders, rich notes with checklists, sharing into the vault, Siri Shortcuts, widgets, Erase Vault, batch actions, all 11 achievement tiers, the full stats page, and the Classic shareable card.

No. Plus controls are marked with a cyan ✦ where their checkmark, radio or chevron would be, and dimmed slightly — but they stay tappable. Tapping one opens the paywall explaining what it unlocks. A locked control that simply does nothing is a dead end, so the app never ships one.

Nothing is taken away. Your notes, photos and folders stay exactly where they are. The free tier hides a number or a picker — for example the Classic stat card theme takes over so a card still renders, and your current app icon is left alone. Nothing behind a Plus gate can create, edit, or expire an item, so lapsing can never orphan content.

Tap Restore at the bottom of the paywall to bring Plus back on a new device. Once you are a member, that same screen shows your plan, your member-since date, and either your renewal date or when access ends — with a Manage Subscription link into the App Store. Lifetime purchases have nothing to manage, so that row is simply not shown.

Folders live on a shelf under the vault title. Tapping one re-renders the vault around it rather than pushing a new screen, so folder to folder is one tap — the grid, search, multiselect and + button all scope themselves to the open folder, and tapping the Vault tile or the Vault tab takes you back out. Each folder has a name, one of 24 colours, an SF Symbol or emoji icon, and its own default deletion timer. Long-press a folder (or tap ··· inside it) to edit it, move it left or right on the shelf, or delete it — either keeping its items in the vault or deleting them with it. The free tier keeps up to 2 folders; Plus removes the cap and adds per-folder self-destruct timers.

The main vault lists only the items that are not in a folder, so the shelf is how you get to the rest — if everything is filed, the vault says so. Search from the main vault, though, and it covers everything, folders included.

Bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, a heading and a subheading, bulleted and numbered lists, and checklists — all rendered inline as you type. Text size comes from S / M / L / XL presets and applies to your selection rather than the whole note. The 📍 button drops a place into the note as a map card that opens directions. Custom fonts (Serif, Mono, Rounded) and text colours are Plus features; everything else is free.

Yes, with Deletable Plus. In the timer sheet, choose On Arrival or On Departure at the bottom and pick the place, and the note deletes itself when you get there or leave instead of on a countdown. The trigger radius is set in Settings → Location Trigger Radius — 100 ft, ¼ mile, 1 mile, or 5 miles. Deletable asks for location access the first time you pick a place, and your coordinates never leave the device.

Turn on Settings → Dynamic Island → Show Countdown, and when an item enters its final hour a live countdown appears on the Lock Screen of any supported iPhone — and in the Dynamic Island itself on iPhone 14 Pro and later. Location-triggered items have no countdown, so they are excluded rather than shown with a fake one.

Go to the Stats tab, pick a card theme, and tap Share My Stats. Deletable renders a styled card showing your tier, items deleted and space freed, ready to share anywhere. Classic is free; Paper, Midnight and Raccoon are Plus themes.

Yes. In Safari, tap Share and choose Deletable to save a URL or selection as an encrypted note. In the Photos app, select a photo, tap Share, and choose Deletable. Both land on the same screen as the main editor — title, folder, timer and notification controls — without opening the app first. On Android the system share sheet does the same thing.

Long-press the Deletable icon and tap Add Note or Add Photo. If the app is locked, the unlock screen appears first and the action runs after. For glanceable info there are widgets too: on iOS, Deletes Soonest (Home Screen or Lock Screen) and Trash Level; on Android, Deletable Countdown and Deletable Trash Level.

Not yet. Deletable is built for iPhone and Android phones, and there is no iPad layout for now.

Check the Background Deleting row in Settings first — it reports when the sweep last finished. Both iOS and Android can delay or throttle background tasks based on battery level and usage patterns. On iOS, make sure Background App Refresh is enabled for Deletable in Settings → General → Background App Refresh, and that Low Power Mode is off. On Android, exclude Deletable from battery optimization in Settings → Apps → Deletable → Battery → Unrestricted (the exact path varies by device). Either way nothing is ever shown to you after it has expired — the purge also runs on launch and on every return to the foreground.

If permission was denied or later revoked, Settings shows a "Reminders Are Blocked" row that taps straight through to system Settings and re-checks when you come back. Otherwise, verify that Expiration Notifications is on in Deletable → Settings, and that notifications are enabled for Deletable in your device Settings.

This is expected if Lock App is enabled and Lock After is set to "Immediately." Change Settings → Security → Lock After to After 1 Minute, 5, or 15 to give yourself a grace period.

That usually means the App Store is temporarily unreachable or your device is offline — the prices come live from the store, so Deletable never shows a stale or hardcoded number. Close and reopen the paywall once you have a connection.

Use the contact form at the bottom of this page. We read every report.