How does pattern unlock work in Cryptile?
You draw a pattern on a grid to open a vault. The pattern is not a screen lock over readable files. Your phone turns it into the key that decrypts everything.
How do I set up a pattern?
- Open Cryptile and choose to create a vault.
- Draw a pattern on the grid. Use 8 or more cells.
- Draw it a second time to confirm.
- Write down the 9-word recovery phrase and keep it somewhere safe.
- Add photos, videos, files or notes.
To open the vault later, draw the same pattern. The trail is hidden by default while you draw.
What happens when I draw a pattern?
Your phone combines the pattern with a secret kept in its Keychain. A slow, standard method then makes it into an encryption key. Every file, thumbnail and index is encrypted with AES-256-GCM.
The key is derived on your device. There is no account and no server, and the developer never holds keys.
Does a different pattern open a different vault?
Yes. Each pattern opens its own vault. A pattern that matches no vault shows an empty one, so there is no vault list to find.
Sizes are padded and spare decoy slots hide how many vaults exist.
What does pattern unlock protect against?
- Someone with your unlocked phone. They see only the vault whose pattern they know.
- Someone with your locked phone. The files are ciphertext.
- Someone who copies the app's files. They cannot try guesses without the Keychain secret.
What does pattern unlock not protect against?
- Short patterns. A pattern is weaker than a passphrase. A 6-cell pattern on a 4×4 grid has about 5.7 million possibilities. An attacker who has your files and your Keychain can try them offline in minutes. Use 8 or more cells, or the larger grid.
- Someone watching you draw. The trail is hidden, but your hand is not.
- A compromised phone. Malware that reads memory while a vault is open is beyond any app.
- Losing everything. Lose the pattern and the recovery phrase, and the vault is gone. There is no reset.
Read the full security page for the threat model.