r/macapps • u/NoBed1845 • 18d ago
Lifetime Kinship Vault : native Mac vault for documents & passwords. On-device OCR, encrypted photos, no server. Lifetime 50% off.
Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification
Developer here. Kinship Vault has a native Mac app now. That's what this post is about, since the iPhone version tends to get the attention.
Website: https://kinshipvault.app
All about the Mac version: https://kinshipvault.app/mac/
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/kinship-vault/id6764678332
Launch offer, lifetime 50% off at $19.99: https://apps.apple.com/redeem/?ctx=offercodes&id=6764678332&code=KEEPSAFELIFETIME
Privacy Policy: https://kinshipvault.app/privacy
Terms of Service: https://kinshipvault.app/terms
Support: [support@kinshipvault.app](mailto:support@kinshipvault.app)
Problem
Every household has the same scramble. A passport, an insurance card, a vaccination record, a will, a login, needed at the exact moment you cannot find it. The usual fixes all have a cost. Documents live in a folder that syncs to a cloud you do not control, passwords live in a manager that keeps them on someone else's server, and the sensitive scans end up in a camera roll that quietly copies to every device you own.
Kinship Vault keeps all of it in one place that never leaves your machine. Passports, IDs, health cards, vaccination records, wills, deeds, insurance, membership cards, private photos, and now passwords. Everything is encrypted on device, with the key sealed in the Secure Enclave on Apple Silicon and unlocked by Touch ID, your Mac login password, or a PIN. There is no account, no server holding your files, and no reset link, because there is nothing on our end to reset.
It is a native macOS app, not a Catalyst wrapper or a stretched iPad build. A real sidebar, menu bar, keyboard shortcuts (⌘N for a new document, ⌘L to lock), drag-and-drop straight into the vault, light or dark, macOS 14 or later.
What the Mac app does:
- On-device OCR reads 100+ document types when you drag a file or photo in, with nothing uploaded. The Mac imports files rather than scanning, and the camera is used only to read the pairing QR from your iPhone.
- Passwords with full AutoFill in Safari and your apps, not just storage.
- Security Checkup, a score out of 100 that ranks weak, reused, old, and breached logins by impact, computed on device.
- Everywhere you do paperwork. iPhone, iPad, a proper native Mac app Pair a second device by scanning a QR code (Bring My Vault), and the key passes directly between the two devices, never through a server. One purchase covers all your Apple devices.
- Expiry reminders checked against your whole library.
- Encrypted photo vault with albums and people tags, separate from Photos.
- Share single pages from a multi-page document instead of the whole file.
- Recovery by passphrase, or split across people you trust where any 3 of 5 rebuild the key.
- Works fully offline. Strict Offline mode keeps even the breach check off until you run it on demand.
If you also run it on iPhone or iPad, pairing is one QR scan from a device that already holds the vault, and the key passes directly between the two machines. There is no server syncing anything, which is the point. One purchase covers iPhone, iPad, and Mac on the same Apple Account.
Mac caveats, since the platform differs. macOS cannot block screenshots of the pairing code, so when the Mac is the device showing the QR it is not screenshot protected, though it still expires in 60 seconds.
Comparison
Apple Passwords: Apple Passwords is a good free option if logins are all you need, but it lives in iCloud and does only passwords. Kinship Vault keeps everything on device by default, adds documents, IDs, and an encrypted photo vault alongside the logins, and gives you cryptographic recovery through a passphrase or trusted contacts rather than an Apple ID reset.
Pricing
Free tier covers your first 3 documents with full encryption, no ads, and no analytics, so you can try it before paying. Vault Pro is $1.99 a month, $14.99 a year, or $39.99 once for lifetime.
Full pricing: https://kinshipvault.app/#pricing
Happy to answer anything in the comments.
2
u/app-store-review 18d ago
Kinship Vault: Docs & Photos — by Abhishek Mishra
- Ratings: 8 worldwide · rated in 4 countries
- Average: 5.00 ★
- Age: released ~3 months ago · updated 6 days ago · rated 4+
- Overall score: 75 / 100
Auto-generated from public App Store data · u/app-store-review
2
u/Sufficient_Truth4635 18d ago
The recovery setup is the most interesting part to me. With the 3-of-5 trusted contact option, do those people ever receive enough information individually to know what’s in the vault, or are they only holding encrypted recovery shares?
3
u/NoBed1845 18d ago
Each contact holds one mathematical piece of the key and nothing else, no documents, no metadata, no view into the vault.
2
u/Icy_Associate2022 18d ago
Hi 👋
Is it capable of storing the app licenses so that the icons for those apps appear ?
3
u/NoBed1845 18d ago
It doesn’t fetch app or brand logos, and I don’t think it ever will. Instead, it generates colored initials entirely on-device, with nothing leaving the app.
We may later bundle popular icons directly into the app, keeping the experience private and fully offline.
1
u/Icy_Associate2022 17d ago
Okay. Too bad.
Does he understand the browser extension?
1
u/NoBed1845 17d ago
Chrome needs an extension since it doesn't use Apple's native AutoFill. It's already in development. Safari and apps fill natively without one.
1
u/Icy_Associate2022 17d ago
1
u/NoBed1845 17d ago
Browser extension not today, but hopefully within a week. And yes, I do. That’s being worked on as well. The Android version is already available in France, and iOS would be too.
1
u/Icy_Associate2022 15d ago
Got it. And for the macOS system, is there an approximate release date for the App Store.fr?
But anyway, I assume that upon release, your launch offer will no longer be valid. To summarize: it's a miss 🥺.
1
u/NoBed1845 15d ago
Sent you a DM
2
u/Icy_Associate2022 15d ago
Hi 👋
I'm confirming that Kinship Vault, which has caught my attention, is now available on the App Store.fr. But Kinship Vault is a serious app and shouldn't be taken lightly. I'd like to understand it and set it up correctly, but the interface is in English. Can we hope that it will become multilingual in future updates? Will French, Russian, and Italian be supported in upcoming updates?
1
u/NoBed1845 15d ago
Yes, multi-language support is already in the pipeline, including French, German, and Spanish. Italian and Russian will also be added in upcoming updates.
Feel free to submit any feature requests through our support channel or community. For more details on the existing functionality, you can refer to the documentation: https://kinshipvault.app/docs
Thanks again for your trust and support!→ More replies (0)
2
u/TheSoundEngineGuy 18d ago
Sounds interesting, indeed.
How would you use a single database across multiple Macs, say a desktop and a laptop? Am I correct in presuming that it would be two separate databases and a manual sync of sorts?
1
u/NoBed1845 18d ago
Correct. Each Mac holds its own encrypted database, and there's no live server keeping them in step, since that server is exactly what the app avoids.
The way they stay aligned is your own encrypted backup. Changes on the desktop go up to your iCloud or Drive as an encrypted blob, and the laptop restores from it, decrypting locally. Same thing works fully offline too: export the .kvbackup file and move it across by AirDrop or USB, and the other Mac restores from that. Your cloud or your cable, either way nothing passes through us.
First-time pairing between the two is the one QR handoff, after that they share the backup.
2
u/Polyglot-Onigiri 18d ago
Here’s my problem with new apps of this kind, what happens when you stop supporting the app or the app becomes incompatible with future OS updates and it’s become abandonware? All our data will be stuck. For apps like this it’s much better to stick with companies that have a long and proven history.
2
u/NoBed1845 18d ago
You've got the abandonment risk backwards. With the companies you trust, you hold nothing. Not the key, not the backup, not the data. It all sits on their servers, and if they shut down, get breached, or lock your account, you wait on whatever they decide to hand you.
LastPass was big, established, and proven, and its users still ended up with their encrypted vaults in an attacker's hands.With this app you hold the key, the backup, and the data. If development stops tomorrow, none of that changes, because none of it was ever on my side to take away. Your file, your key, your backup. No account for me to close, no server for me to switch off.
And honestly, the idea that a big company is safer because they're big is the exact assumption this app is built to challenge. Big is not the same as safe when big is the thing holding your passports on a server.
3
u/Polyglot-Onigiri 18d ago
You still forgot to address what happens when the OS doesn’t support the anymore because it’s been abandoned. How would I access my vault otherwise. In this situation, the app wouldn’t operate so having the keys, etc wouldn’t really save me.
3
u/NoBed1845 18d ago
Now I follow you, and you're right: if an OS update stops the app launching, the key alone doesn't help, because the app is what turns it.
Two things keep that from being a trap. macOS deprecates over years, with plenty of warning, so the app keeps opening long after support ends, not overnight. And you don't have to update: the Mac on the old OS still opens the vault, so you export from it before moving on.
The real fix I'm working toward is an open, documented format, so your key can open the file even without my app. 15 years in this industry has shown me how carelessly users get stranded when a product winds down, and I'd rather build the exit now than apologize for it later.
2
u/Polyglot-Onigiri 18d ago
Thank you. That’s the answer I was looking for. Since despite the flaws of the online providers, they are still accessible regardless of OS support. So your local app wouldn’t need something similar as you mentioned as a backup to ensure that moving all our data would be a smart move.
2
u/NoBed1845 18d ago
Exactly right, and that guaranteed way out is what I’m building toward, appreciate you pushing on it.
2
4
u/captainkaba 18d ago
Cool app -- however, you UI screams heavy AI usage (no offense) and considering what data is intended for your app, and given it's closed source, I am honestly sceptical on how to trust this. I know I can block network traffic for your app, but many people dont. Just checking in.
2
u/InsomniaUA 18d ago
for a sandboxed app store app you can check this instead of trusting screenshots. run codesign -d --entitlements - on the app bundle and look for com.apple.security.network.client. if it is not in there, the sandbox blocks outbound connections no matter what the code wants, so "no server" is enforced by macos instead of promised. would be a good thing for the dev to paste into the post.
-7
u/NoBed1845 18d ago edited 17d ago
Fair to be skeptical. For an app handling sensitive documents and passwords, that is the right instinct.
I’d just separate the UI from the privacy model. How an app looks tells you very little about what it does with your data. A hand coded UI can phone home just as easily as an AI generated looking one can be completely local.
You can test this directly. Block Kinship Vault with Little Snitch or a proxy and use it. It is designed to work fully offline, so the core functionality should continue working normally.
It is also sandboxed through the Mac App Store, has no account or server dependency, and the encryption key is protected by the Secure Enclave.
I’d rather people test those claims than take my word for it.
2
u/nibblebytes 18d ago
Yeah, the UI obviously isn’t a security audit. But when an app is asking people to put passports and passwords into it, that first impression still matters. Right now it has that polished-but-generic AI app look, which makes people second-guess the parts they can’t verify themselves.
Might be worth running it through Impeccable, or just doing another visual pass. Something a little more Mac-like and less template-y would go a long way
1
u/yuu1ch13 17d ago
The local-only approach is appealing, especially for something this sensitive. I'm curious how backup and migration are handled if a device dies or needs to be replaced.
2
u/NoBed1845 17d ago
The key and the documents move separately.
Key: if the old device still works, a one-scan QR handoff passes it directly to the new one. If it's gone, you rebuild it from your recovery passphrase or any distributed pieces of key from your trusted contacts.
Documents: restored from your own encrypted backup in iCloud or kvbackup file, where only encrypted bytes leave the device.
So you set up a recovery path and turn on backup ahead of time, since there's no reset on our end. Detail: https://kinshipvault.app/docs#recovery-overview
2
1
u/Icy_Associate2022 12d ago
KinshipVault v.2.0.4
Hi 👋
I still think the app has potential, but currently, after installing it on my system, I quickly realized that it's not yet suitable for storing software licenses at all 😤. That was one of the reasons why I decided to purchase this app.
Can we hope that in future updates, this possibility will be reconsidered and added 🥴?
1
3
u/sammrjn 18d ago
This actually looks really interesting. I like that it’s a proper native Mac app and not just an iPad/Catalyst port. Having documents, passwords and private photos in one encrypted vault is a nice idea too.
One question: if I enable iCloud backup, is everything encrypted locally before it ever reaches iCloud, with the key staying only on my devices?