Encrypted backup: move your vault to a new phone

Updated November 9, 2026

What is an encrypted backup?

An encrypted backup is a portable file with the contents of your vault, locked before it leaves the app. Vaultopaz creates the file on your phone, seals it and hands it to you. Where it goes next is your decision. The app has no internet permission, so it cannot upload the file anywhere.

Your vault on the phone is tied to that phone’s hardware keystore, as explained on the encryption on the device page. A backup file is built to work without that hardware key, so you can open it on another phone.

How it works

The file is sealed with AES-256-GCM, the same cipher that protects your vault on the phone. The seal does not depend on the phone’s hardware key. It depends on a secret you pick when you export: a password of your own, or the nine words of your recovery phrase.

To open the file, you import it in Vaultopaz and enter that same secret. Without it, the file stays encrypted.

The screens where you export a backup or type its secret refuse screenshots and screen recording.

What it does and does not do

What it does:

• Puts the contents of the open vault in one encrypted file that you control.
• Opens on another phone with the password or recovery phrase you sealed it with.
• Stays encrypted wherever you keep it, on a computer, a memory card or a second phone.

What it does not do:

• Upload anything. There is no account, no server and no copy outside the places you choose.
• Run by itself. Vaultopaz makes no backups on its own, and Android’s own app backup is switched off for it. A backup exists only where you export it.
• Give you readable files. For a normal, decrypted copy of a file there is a separate export that asks for confirmation first.

When to use it

• Before you move to a new phone.
• Before a repair or a reset that could wipe the phone.
• As a spare copy, so a lost or broken phone does not take your files with it.
• After you add files you would hate to lose. Make a new export so they are in it.

How to set it up

1. Open the vault you want to back up, tap the menu and choose Encrypted backup.
2. Pick the secret: your own password, or your nine recovery words.
3. Choose where to save the file, and keep a copy somewhere other than the phone itself.
4. On the new phone, install Vaultopaz, tap Import encrypted backup, choose the file and enter the same secret. Then draw a pattern for this phone and write down the nine new recovery words it shows. Those new words are the recovery phrase on that phone.

Keep the password apart from the file. Anyone who has both can open the backup. A backup holds the vault that is open when you export it, so make one for each vault. See one pattern, one vault for how patterns and vaults belong together.