App icons: the seal in four colours, or something plainer

What you can choose

Sealed has eight app icons: the seal on Bone, Midnight, Onyx or Forest, and plain Square, Grid, Folder and Notes icons.

Bone is the icon the app starts with.

Besides the seal in other colors, the App Icon screen offers plain, quiet icons for a home screen you’d rather keep understated.

How to switch

1. Open Settings in Sealed.
2. Under Display & Sound, tap App Icon. App Icon is in Settings, under Display & Sound.
3. Tap the icon you want.
4. Confirm the message that appears.

The new icon takes the old one’s place wherever the app shows up. Switch back the same way at any time.

What changes and what doesn’t

The picture changes. The name does not. Whichever icon you choose, the name under it on the Home Screen still reads Sealed.

That is deliberate. The icon is a matter of taste: a calmer look on a tidy Home Screen, or a colour that matches your wallpaper. It is not meant to pass the vault off as a different app, and nothing about the vault’s protection depends on it.

What protects the vault is its lock. Sealed has a passcode of its own, a gate inside the app that is separate from your iPhone passcode. You can open Sealed with Face ID or Touch ID, a 4-, 6- or 9-digit passcode, a password or a pattern.

If you’d rather the icon wasn’t on your Home Screen at all

iOS has its own tools for that, and they work with any app. You can move an app off the Home Screen into the App Library, or lock it with Face ID so it needs a match to open. Apple lets you require Face ID, Touch ID or your passcode to open an app, and says information inside a locked app won’t appear in other places such as CarPlay, notification previews, search, Siri suggestions or your call history. To lock an app, touch and hold it on the Home Screen and tap Require Face ID, Touch ID or Passcode, and it locks again each time you quit it.

The guide to locking an app explains what that lock covers. It sits in front of the vault’s own lock, not instead of it.

Pair it with a lock screen you like

If you are changing how the vault looks, the lock screen is the other half. seven You can try each one before you choose. In Settings you can try every lock screen style live before choosing one, and nothing you try there is saved or counted as a wrong attempt. The lock screen styles page shows them all.

Free or Pro

Choosing another app icon is part of Sealed Pro. The vault keeps the Bone icon on the free plan.

Where Sealed helps, and where it doesn’t

It helps you pick an icon that suits your Home Screen, plain or with the seal. Besides the seal in other colors, the App Icon screen offers plain, quiet icons for a home screen you’d rather keep understated.

It doesn’t do these things:

• Rename the app. Whichever icon you choose, the name under it on the Home Screen still reads Sealed.
• Add protection. The icon is appearance only; the lock does the work. Sealed has a passcode of its own, a gate inside the app that is separate from your iPhone passcode.
• Work on the free plan. Choosing another app icon is part of Sealed Pro. For keeping the app itself out of sight, see where private photos still show up.