SafetyImg sends pictures and videos to the people you pick — encrypted end to end, for as long as you allow, and revocable at any moment.
Download for AndroidEvery ordinary way of sending a photo hands over a copy. The other person can save it, forward it, keep it after the conversation is over — and so can whoever runs the service in between.
SafetyImg is built the other way round. Your device encrypts a picture before it leaves; what reaches our server is indistinguishable from random noise, and we hold no key to it. The people you share with can look at the picture inside the app. They cannot download it, forward it, or export it, and on Android the screen is blocked from being captured. When you revoke access, it is gone for them — not hidden, gone.
Encryption happens on your device. The server stores ciphertext and knows only type, size and dimensions. We cannot look at your media, and neither can anyone who breaks into the server.
You connect by username, and the other side has to accept. There is no address book upload, no discovery, no suggestions.
Share with no time limit, until a fixed date, for a number of hours after it is first opened, or — for a single picture — for one viewing only.
Access stops immediately, and the folder is re-encrypted with a new key so the old one is worthless.
The viewer marks its window as protected, so Android refuses to capture it. If someone tries anyway, you are told.
Media are decrypted in memory for as long as they are on screen. No copy is written to storage, to the gallery, or to a cache.
Up to 500 MB per video, 5 GB of storage per account. Location data and camera metadata are stripped before upload.
Lose your phone and your account is not lost. A recovery passphrase or a 24-word code restores your keys on a new device.
Every product in this space is tempted to overpromise. Here is the part that is usually left out.
SafetyImg is not in the Play Store yet, so Android will ask you a few questions it does not ask for ordinary installs. All of them are normal. Here is what they mean.
Tap Download for Android on the phone itself. You will end up with a file called safetyimg.apk in your Downloads.
Open the downloaded file. Android will say that this app is not allowed to install unknown apps, and offer you a Settings button. Follow it and switch on Allow from this source.
You are not switching off a protection for the whole phone. Since Android 8, the permission belongs to the one app that is doing the installing — your browser or your file manager — and nothing else. You can switch it off again afterwards.
If you would rather set it beforehand: Settings → Apps → Special app access → Install unknown apps, then pick your browser. On Samsung devices the same page sits behind the three-dot menu in Settings → Apps.
Tap Install. Play Protect may report that it does not recognise the developer and offer Install anyway or More details. That message says nothing about whether the app is harmful — it appears for every app that does not come from the Play Store. Verify the checksum below if you would like certainty.
Have three things ready before you start, because two of them cannot be reset later:
An email address — you will get one confirmation link.
An account password — for signing in.
A recovery passphrase — this is a different thing from
the password. It protects your private key, and it is the reason we can
keep your media unreadable to us. Nobody can reset it for you.
At the end the app shows you 24 words. Write them down on paper and keep them somewhere safe. Together with the passphrase they are the only two ways back to your own pictures.
Updates. An app installed this way does not update itself. When there is a new version, download it from this page again and install it on top — your account and your media stay where they are.
Optional, and worth the minute if you care. This is the SHA-256 checksum of the file offered above:
1ea065d8d990622e45d74220702b59f02bde3fc50119624fa9a23362b6a8965e
On a computer, run sha256sum safetyimg.apk (Linux) or shasum -a 256 safetyimg.apk (macOS) and compare. If the two differ, do not install the file.
| Operating system | Android 10 or newer |
|---|---|
| iPhone | Not yet. An iOS version is planned but not available. |
| Web version | None, deliberately. A browser cannot stop a page being saved, which would undo the whole point. |
| Storage per account | 5 GB |
| Largest video | 500 MB |
| Minimum age | 18 years |