Unreleased work: sketches, mockups and demos on your phone

Where drafts leak on a phone

Unfinished work rarely leaks through a break-in. It leaks through ordinary features:

• A shared photo library, where everyone in it sees what you add. In an iCloud Shared Photo Library you can invite up to five contacts, and anyone in it can add, edit or delete items.
• Memories and widgets, which pick photos for the Home Screen. Photos can feature your photos in memories, in featured photos and in the Photos widget, and you can turn that off with Show Featured Content, under Collections and then your account button in Photos.
• Showing a friend one photo, then swiping past it into the album cover you haven’t announced.
• Screenshots of a design file, saved to the library on their own. Screenshots are saved to your photo library automatically.

The shared library guide explains how that library decides what to share.

Give each project its own place

1. Make a stack per project, with sub-stacks for versions or chapters. Stacks and sub-stacks keep your vault organized. On the free plan you can make a few sub-stacks. On the free plan you can make up to 3 sub-stacks, and Sealed Pro has no limit.
2. Bring the work in. Photos of sketches from the camera roll, exported mockups from Files, and files from a computer over your own Wi-Fi. You can add photos from Photos, files from Files, and items from the share sheet of other apps. Wireless transfer runs over your own Wi-Fi, between your computer and your iPhone, and nothing goes through the internet.
3. Record voice ideas straight into it. A melody hummed on a walk is safer there than in an app that syncs to a shared account. Voice memos record straight into the vault, and only while the recording screen is open.
4. Shoot reference photos with the vault’s camera so they never reach your library. The private camera shoots straight into the vault.
5. Lock the stack for the project you’re most careful about. Each stack can have its own lock, and stack locks are part of Sealed Pro.

Videos, documents, voice memos and the camera are Sealed Pro; photos work on the free plan. On the free plan you can add photos. Videos, documents, notes and records need Sealed Pro.

Sending a preview

Most previews go to people who don’t use your apps: a client, a label, an editor.

• Export a reduced copy, not your master file. Viewing and exporting your own photos is always free. The image compressor makes a smaller copy in your browser. 4096, 2048, 1600, 1280 or 800 pixels
• Add a visible watermark with your name and “draft” before exporting. It’s the one protection that survives a screenshot.
• Send it the way the person asked, and keep a note of who got which version. Secure notes are sealed like everything else in the vault.

If they use Sealed too, a share can be view only and can end after a set time. A share of a photo, video or PDF can be view only, which leaves it no way out of the receiver’s vault. An encrypted share can end after an hour, a day, 7 days or 30 days, and the receiving phone removes the item when it expires. Expiring and view-only shares are part of Sealed Pro.

Before a launch

Embargoed work has a date. Check that nothing sits in a shared library or a shared album, that your phone’s wallpaper isn’t the new cover, and that any scheduled posts use the final files. On the day, move the finished pieces wherever they belong.

Photographers holding client shoots have a related checklist on the client photos page.

Where Sealed helps, and where it doesn’t

It helps keep drafts, demos and references in one place, away from shared libraries and memories. Photos and videos are sealed the moment they arrive, and afterwards you can remove the originals from Photos if you like. Sealed has a passcode of its own, a gate inside the app that is separate from your iPhone passcode.

It helps send a view-only preview that ends, to someone who also uses Sealed. A share of a photo, video or PDF can be view only, which leaves it no way out of the receiver’s vault.

It doesn’t watermark images or protect your copyright. Sealed is a private photo vault for the photos, videos and documents you’d rather not keep in your camera roll.

It doesn’t stop a screenshot of a preview you sent. Sealed enforces a share’s limits on the phone that receives it, and says they can’t stop a screenshot or be taken back once the share is sent.