Location Lock: trusted places only

What it is for

A passcode can be watched over your shoulder. A phone can be taken with you away from home. Location Lock adds a condition that neither of those gives a person: being in a place you chose.

Location lock opens the vault only at places you trust, and it is part of Sealed Pro.

So someone who learns your passcode on a train, then takes the phone, still can’t open the vault there.

How to set it up

1. Open Settings in Sealed. Location Lock has its own row in Settings, under Security, and it needs at least one trusted place before it can be turned on.
2. Tap the map where a place should be, or use Add Current Location. 100 to 1,000 meters
3. Name the place and set its radius.
4. Turn on Location Lock.

The radius screen notes that GPS is accurate to about 10 to 50 meters outdoors and advises not going below 100 meters.

You can add more than one place: home, a parent’s house, your desk. Each one keeps its own name and radius, and you can change or remove it later.

Choosing a radius

A small circle is stricter but less forgiving. Phones guess their position, and the guess is worse indoors, near tall buildings and right after the phone wakes up.

Start medium, live with it for a week, then tighten it.

No location means no entry

This is the part to understand before you turn it on. With Location Lock on, if your location can’t be confirmed, for example in Airplane Mode, with Location Services off or with no GPS, the vault stays sealed until it can.

That is on purpose. If Airplane Mode or switching off location could turn the lock off, it would protect nothing. Location Lock counts only a location fix from the last two minutes, so a saved last-known location can’t carry an old trusted place through the check.

The cost is real: on a day when your phone can’t find itself, you wait until it can. The lock screen says why. Your phone’s location access for Sealed is in iOS Settings. In iOS you can review or change an app’s location access in Settings, under Privacy & Security, then Location Services.

What stays private

Trusted places are sealed and never leave the iPhone.

Sealed’s location permission is for break-in alerts (where a failed unlock happened), Location Lock (checking you are at a trusted place) and evidence stacks (where each item was added), and the locations are sealed in your vault and never shared.

How it fits with other locks

• Your passcode, face or pattern still opens the vault once the place checks out. You can open Sealed with Face ID or Touch ID, a 4-, 6- or 9-digit passcode, a password or a pattern.
• Dual Lock asks for both a passcode and a face. Dual Lock asks for your passcode and a Face ID match together, and it is part of Sealed Pro. The Dual Lock page explains it.
• Wrong passcodes are still counted and slowed down. By default, after three wrong passcodes in a row Sealed locks entry for 30 seconds, then for 1, 5, 15 and finally 60 minutes after each further wrong try.
• Forgot passcode? resets the passcode but does not skip the place check. Resetting your passcode with the recovery key does not open the vault: you come back to the lock screen, and Dual Lock, location lock and Maximum Security still apply.

Where Sealed helps, and where it doesn’t

It helps when the risk is a phone taken away from home by someone who knows or guesses your passcode. Location lock opens the vault only at places you trust, and it is part of Sealed Pro.

It doesn’t do these things:

• Open the vault without a location fix, even for you. With Location Lock on, if your location can’t be confirmed, for example in Airplane Mode, with Location Services off or with no GPS, the vault stays sealed until it can.
• Protect the vault at home. Inside a trusted place, only your usual lock stands in the way. You can open Sealed with Face ID or Touch ID, a 4-, 6- or 9-digit passcode, a password or a pattern.
• Work on the free plan. Sealed Pro adds privacy tools including the decoy vault, a duress code, break-in photos, Dual Lock, Location Lock, Maximum Security, locked stacks and seven lock screens. If your phone is stolen, the stolen iPhone guide lists what to do first.