> Lost access to vault with iOS 11

I used to use an app called My Photos, in whose ‘vault’ I kept photos and documents hidden from view. As the app isn’t iOS 11-ready, and is no longer available, how do I get the files?

A few apps have offered a vault feature, including Private Photo Vault, which is compatible with iOS 11. We’ve been unable to trace the My Photos app on the App Store — so it does seem to have completely vanished.

For a short period after iOS 11 shipped, you could have returned to iOS 10 and restored from a backup made before upgrading. That depends on Apple providing that older version for your device, which it has stopped doing. You’d also have needed a suitable backup — local or in iCloud — from which to restore.

Often the protection provided by vault apps is rudimentary, only sufficient to keep prying eyes away, and easily bypassed when your iPad’s storage is accessed from a Mac. Try iMazing (£34.99, imazing.com — there’s a trial version available) to test whether it’s able to access the files trapped in your vault, and whether or not they are encrypted or readily viewable.

In iTunes 12.7 and later, you can’t download iOS apps or manage those that are installed on iOS devices. To further complicate matters, iTunes hasn’t synced apps downloaded in iOS itself back to the Mac for a while now; with iOS 9, Apple introduced a set of techniques called ‘app thinning’ to save bandwidth and storage by Vault apps can protect private info on a shared iOS device, but do make sure you have a backup of that data somewhere. downloading only what’s necessary for the device you’re using, which would stop you transferring apps from your iPad to your Mac and then to your iPhone.

Even having an iOS 10 device to hand is unlikely to help. At a stretch, there’s a chance My Photos might have stored a backup of its contents in a cloud-based service. You’d also need to be able to redownload the app from your past purchases. But you’ll probably find that My Photos stores its vault locally, and that you can’t transfer the vault’s contents given you’re unable to open the app.