COLDVAULT Locked —

Settings

Appearance

Dark gives off less light: easier on the eyes at night and harder to read over your shoulder.

Guide & Security

How to start, how saving works on each device, and how safe your data is.

Tabs

Choose which tabs appear, and drag to change their order.

    Auto-lock

    Locks and wipes memory after no activity. Shorter is safer in public.

    Backups

    Save an extra encrypted copy to another drive or folder.

    Passphrase

    Re-encrypts with a new passphrase. Copies made earlier keep the old one.

    ColdVault build 2026.10.24-b66

    Type to search everything in this vault.

    Guide & Security

    Getting Started
    1. Create New Vault and choose where to save it: a USB drive, or any folder. Give it a name you’ll recognise, such as vault-personal.json.
    2. Choose a passphrase (see Choosing a Passphrase below), then pick which tabs you want. Tabs can be changed later in Settings.
    3. Next time, choose Open vault.json, pick the same file and enter your passphrase.

    ColdVault never remembers your file or your passphrase. You pick the file and type the passphrase each time you open it.

    Finding things: press Ctrl+K (⌘K on a Mac) or tap the search icon in the top bar to search every tab at once. In Accounts → Logins, Password Health points out weak, reused and old passwords so you know which to change.

    Ledger, Budget & Recurring
    • Ledger: set Repeat when adding a transaction (rent, paychecks, subscriptions). It then appears under Recurring and adds itself on each due date.
    • ColdVault only runs while your vault is open, so due entries are added when you unlock. After a gap of a few weeks, or for bills whose amount varies, it shows a list first: untick anything that didn’t happen and fill in or correct the amounts. Decide Later leaves them for next time.
    • Entries are never added ahead of time. Monthly items on the 29th–31st fall on the last day of shorter months.
    • When something changes (a new rent, a new job), use Edit on the schedule and set the date the change takes effect. Entries already added from that date can be updated to match; older ones stay as they were. To end a schedule on a past date, set Ends → On a Date. Pause skips the time it was paused, and Stop ends it today. Entries already added are always kept unless you choose to remove them.
    • Categories & months: give ledger entries a Category (Groceries, Housing, Pay…). The ledger shows one month at a time; use Year or All for more, and the filter to find entries.
    • By Category (above the ledger list) shows where the money went, or came from with Income, for the month or year you’re viewing, biggest first. Tap a category, here or in the table, to show only its entries; tap again to show everything. In Year view, the chart shows each month’s income and expenses with the net underneath; tap a month to see its categories, and Whole Year to go back.
    • Bills in the Planner: upcoming recurring bills and paychecks also appear in the Planner, in Upcoming (next 30 days) and on the Calendar, next to your tasks. Tap Open to go to the schedule in the Ledger. Tip: drag the Planner to the front in Settings → Tabs to see what’s coming as soon as you unlock.
    • Budget vs. actual: in Budget, edit a line and pick ledger categories under Track Spending From. That line then shows this month’s real spending against the plan. Lines you don’t connect stay a plan only.
    • Planner: give a dated task a Repeat. Ticking it done adds the next one, so a missed month still leaves just one overdue task.
    • Each copy of your vault keeps its own record of what has been added. If you open an older copy or a backup, it may offer entries the newer copy already has, so check the list before adding.
    Atlas: Your Life on a Map
    • Places: tap + Add Place (or Drop Pin on the map), tap the exact spot, and choose Lived, Visited, Want to Go or Other. Add a date (moved in and out for homes), notes, a tag, and ★ your favorites.
    • Trips group places and flights: add a trip with its dates, then use + Add a Place and + Log a Flight inside it. On the map a trip is a dashed route between its places.
    • Flights: the date and airport codes (JFK, LHR…). About 570 airports are built in; for any other code, add its city and country once.
    • The chips above the map choose what it shows; drag the Year slider to see one year of your life. Tap a pin for its details.
    • Timeline lists everything in order; tap an entry to see it on the map. Stats shows countries, cities, where you’ve lived longest and your flying.
    • Everything is worked out on your device. Only the street and satellite map pictures come from the internet; your places are never sent anywhere.
    Accounts: Everything You’re Signed Up For
    • Keep one list of every account: credit cards (last 4 digits only), miles & points, subscriptions, bills & services (utilities, insurance, phone), and websites & apps.
    • Any account can hold its login. The password stays hidden until you tap Reveal, and the Logins view checks for weak, reused and old passwords.
    • Give an account a date (payment due, renewal, expiry) and it shows in the Planner’s Upcoming and on the Calendar.
    • Mark something Cancel This so you don’t forget it; it’s counted at the top and listed under Life Changed. Set it to Closed once it’s done, to keep a record.
    • Life Changed: fill in the email, phone and address each account is registered with. When you move or get a new number or email, pick what changed: you get a checklist of every account still using the old one. Ticking an account updates it here too.
    • Secure Notes hold anything else secret: recovery codes, Wi-Fi passwords, ID numbers.
    Saving & Your File
    • Chrome, Edge, Brave or Opera on a computer: every change is saved straight into your file. The status at the top shows Saving and Saved.
    • iPhone, iPad, Safari and Firefox: these browsers can’t write to a file directly. Your changes are kept, encrypted, in the page; tap Save to store the updated file. On iPhone choose Save to Files and replace the old vault; elsewhere it downloads. If it auto-locks before you save, your changes are kept, encrypted, and offered back when you unlock, but always save before closing the page.
    • Backups: your whole vault is one file. Use Settings → Backups → Save Backup Copy to save a dated, encrypted copy, and keep it on a different drive. ColdVault reminds you if it’s been a while. A backup keeps the passphrase it had when it was saved.
    • Another device: copy the file across (USB drive, AirDrop, cloud drive) and open it there. It stays encrypted wherever it’s stored, though keeping it offline is safest.
    Locking & Privacy
    • ColdVault locks itself after the time set in Settings → Auto-lock and wipes the unlocked data from memory. Lock & Eject does it immediately.
    • The screen blurs whenever you switch to another window, so a glance at an unattended screen shows nothing.
    • Nothing is kept in the browser: no cookies, no saved data. Closing the tab leaves nothing behind.
    • Your data never leaves your device. The only thing the page loads from the internet is map pictures for the Streets and Satellite maps in Atlas, from Esri. Esri can see which map area you’re viewing and your internet address, never your vault data. Offline, the built-in world map is used instead.
    How the Encryption Works
    • Everything is encrypted with AES-256 before it’s written. The file on your drive is always encrypted.
    • The key is made from your passphrase each time you unlock, using a deliberately slow step (PBKDF2, 600,000 rounds). The key and passphrase are never saved anywhere: not in the file, not in the browser.
    • Every vault has its own random salt, so two vaults with the same passphrase still have different keys, and each one has to be attacked separately.
    • If the file is altered or damaged, it simply won’t open, rather than showing changed data.

    Can someone with my vault file and this app’s code get in? No. The code is public on purpose. It only shows how the lock works, the same as for Signal or Bitwarden. Without your passphrase, the only thing anyone can do is guess it.

    Choosing a Passphrase

    Because each guess goes through the slow step, a top-end graphics card can try only about 10,000 passphrases a second. Rough average time to crack (the passphrase screens show this live as you type):

    Passphrase1 graphics card1,000 cards
    A common password or one dictionary wordSecondsInstant
    8 random letters and numbersAbout 4 yearsAbout 2 days
    4 suggested wordsAbout 7 yearsAbout 3 days
    5 suggested wordsAbout 11,000 yearsAbout 11 years
    6 suggested wordsAbout 16 million yearsAbout 16,000 years
    7 suggested wordsLonger than the age of the universeAbout 24 million years
    • Use 6 or more random words. Suggest Passphrase on the create and change-passphrase screens picks 6 at random for you, for example lamp orbit velvet canyon thistle harbor. Words you pick yourself are easier to guess than random ones. Don’t use it anywhere else.
    • There is no recovery. If you forget your passphrase, the data can’t be opened by anyone, ever. Write it down and keep it somewhere physically safe.
    What Can Still Go Wrong
    • Malware on your device that records what you type. Keep your computer and phone up to date.
    • A fake copy of the app. A look-alike site could be altered to capture passphrases. Bookmark ColdVault’s address and always open it from that bookmark. Your vault file works with any genuine copy of ColdVault.
    • Someone at your unlocked screen. Use a short auto-lock in public and Lock & Eject when you step away.
    • Losing your only copy. Keep a backup of the vault file on a second drive.

    Recurring Entries Due

    ← All apps

    Drive Mount

    Plug in your USB volume, then open an existing vault.json or create a new one on it. The file is encrypted before it is written, and your data never leaves this device.

    ColdVault build 2026.10.24-b66