Time-sealed stacks: add now, open later

What a time-sealed stack is

A time-sealed stack keeps taking new things, but you can’t open it until the day you choose.

A stack is a folder in your vault, and a time-sealed one is a folder with a date on the door. You can keep dropping things in. You can’t look inside until the day comes.

Ideas for one

• Letters to someone in your family, sealed until a birthday years away.
• A year in photos, added as you go and opened on New Year’s Day.
• Notes to your future self about a decision, opened once you know how it turned out.
• A project diary, closed until the work is done, so you don’t read it back too early.

The point of each is the same: the waiting is part of the gift.

Making one

1. On the Stacks tab, touching and holding the plus button offers New Stack, New Time-Sealed Stack and New Evidence Stack. Choose New Time-Sealed Stack.
2. Pick the day it opens, and create the stack.
3. Add photos, videos, notes or anything else you keep in the vault.
4. Keep adding over time. It stays sealed until the day.

A stack you already have can be time-sealed from its menu with Seal Until a Date…, unless it is an evidence stack.

While a stack is time-sealed you can keep it sealed longer but never open it sooner, and it can’t be deleted. So pick a day you are sure of: a later one can always be chosen, an earlier one can’t.

When the day comes

On the day a time-sealed stack opens, Sealed can send a notification at 9:00 that says a sealed stack is ready, without the stack’s name.

The notification gives away nothing about what is inside, so it is fine to see on a lock screen.

Opening it early

You can open a time-sealed stack early with your recovery key; that can’t be undone, but you can seal the stack again.

Your recovery key is the proof that the vault is yours, so a stranger holding your phone can’t break the seal with a guess. The recovery key page explains what else the key opens.

What kind of lock it is

A time seal is a promise the app keeps, not extra encryption: the contents are encrypted like the rest of your vault, and setting the phone’s clock ahead reaches the day sooner.

Read that honestly. A time seal keeps you, and anyone using your vault, from opening the stack early by accident or on a whim. It is not a vault inside a vault, and it does not stop someone who changes the date on the phone. For content that needs its own lock, a locked stack is the better tool.

Free or Pro

Creating a time-sealed stack or an evidence stack is part of Sealed Pro, while opening one and adding to it are not.

Where Sealed helps, and where it doesn’t

It helps you build something to open later and keep it closed until then. A time-sealed stack keeps taking new things, but you can’t open it until the day you choose.

It doesn’t do these things:

• Add a second layer of encryption, or resist a clock set forward. A time seal is a promise the app keeps, not extra encryption: the contents are encrypted like the rest of your vault, and setting the phone’s clock ahead reaches the day sooner.
• Stay sealed once opened early. You can open a time-sealed stack early with your recovery key; that can’t be undone, but you can seal the stack again.
• Come free to create. Creating a time-sealed stack or an evidence stack is part of Sealed Pro, while opening one and adding to it are not.
• Replace a locked stack. See stacks and locked stacks.