Sealby
A sealed digital copy with its own recovery path
Store private instructions and supporting files in an encrypted vault, then keep its recovery phrase separately.
Plan for private files and digital legacyFamily & legacy
Digital legacy: passing on private files without giving up privacy now
The uncomfortable design problem: documents nobody may see today, and exactly one person must be able to reach one day. Most solutions fail one side or the other. The good ones use a sealed key, not shared access.
Keeping important records recoverable
Paper original
Still essential for some legal records
A signed will or certificate may need to remain on paper and be stored where the right person can find it.
Password manager
Good for accounts and structured secrets
Useful when emergency access and inheritance settings are configured and tested.
Safe or deposit box
Strong physical protection
Access rules, location risk and whether your family knows it exists still need planning.
The two failure modes
Legacy plans fail in one of two directions. Too open: shared passcodes, a "family" cloud folder, an executor with standing access — privacy is spent years before it is needed, and every added person is an added risk surface. Too closed: perfect encryption, keys nowhere, and the family faces a mathematically sealed archive at the worst possible time. Both failures come from using one mechanism for two jobs — daily privacy and eventual transfer — that need opposite properties.
The sealed-key pattern
Separate the jobs. Daily privacy: an encrypted vault only you can open, exactly as before. Eventual transfer: the vault’s recovery phrase — a key that opens that vault and nothing else — written down, sealed, and stored where your estate process will surface it: with a lawyer or notary, in a safe-deposit box, or split between two people you trust for different reasons.
The properties fall out naturally. Nobody has access while you live, and you can tell how access would happen — a physical envelope, visibly opened. The scope is one curated vault, not your digital life. Revocation is trivial: move the contents to a new vault with a new phrase, and the old envelope is paper. And the person retrieving it needs no technical skill — a phrase and an app install, with your instructions in the envelope.
Making it real
Three practical steps turn the pattern into a plan. Write instructions for a stressed non-expert: what this envelope is, what app to install, how to enter the phrase, who to call if stuck. Rehearse the restore once yourself on a second device, so you know the phrase on the paper actually works. And put a yearly reminder to review the vault’s contents — the plan should age with your life, not fossilise at the moment you made it.
Quick answers
What is wrong with just telling someone my PIN?
It converts "access one day" into "access any day": your protection now depends on their memory, their devices, and how your relationship evolves. Estate planning should not weaken the living person’s privacy — a sealed recovery phrase separates the two cleanly.
Is Apple’s Legacy Contact enough?
It is well-built for what it covers: after death, with a death certificate and the access key, the contact can obtain the iCloud account’s data. It is account-scoped rather than per-collection, and some categories are excluded. For "these specific files, this specific person, nothing else", a per-vault key does what an account-level program cannot.
How does this work with Sealby vaults?
Each vault has its own recovery phrase, generated at creation and never stored by us. Write the phrase for your legacy vault on paper, seal it with instructions, and place it with your estate documents. Whoever retrieves it can restore exactly that vault — other vaults stay unrelated and undiscoverable. Until the envelope opens, nobody (including us) has anything.
What should actually go in a legacy vault?
What the person will genuinely need: the will’s location, key contacts, account inventory, insurance and property documents, passwords they must have, a personal letter if you wish. Curate it like a briefing, not an archive — and revisit it yearly, because stale instructions can be worse than none.
Your vault is waiting.
Download Sealby and protect what matters. Setup takes under a minute, and there’s no account to create.
Download on the App Store
iPhone & iPad · iOS 17+ · Free