Most "secure folder" apps make you decrypt a file just to look at it. File Vault renders images, video, audio, and PDFs straight from memory -- so your files stay encrypted right up until the moment you're actually looking at them, and not a moment longer.
File Vault doesn't trade privacy for usability -- it's built so you never have to choose.
Every file is encrypted on your device before it's stored. There's no server that can read your files, because there's no server that holds your key.
A BIP-39 recovery phrase, generated once and shown to you exactly once, is the only way back in if you forget your master password -- the same recovery model shared across the whole Vault Suite.
Photos, videos, documents, archives -- File Vault stores anything, organized into folders that make sense to you, not a flat list you have to search through.
Face ID and fingerprint unlock for fast, everyday access -- layered on top of your master password, never replacing it.
Need to hand a file to another app? File Vault decrypts a copy only when you explicitly ask it to, and tells you so -- it never happens silently in the background.
File Vault shares its premium entitlement with Password Vault and Email Vault -- unlock one, and cross-device sync is available across all three, without separate subscriptions.
The usual tradeoff: either your files stay encrypted and you can't easily look at them, or you decrypt them to a temp file and hope you remember to clean it up. File Vault does neither.
Images render straight from decrypted memory. No temp file is ever written just to show you a photo.
Video and audio stream from a local loopback connection that only your own device can reach -- so players can seek and scrub normally, without a decrypted copy sitting on disk.
PDFs and text render inline too, with full text selection -- read a document without ever exporting it first.
Opening a file in another app is the one honest exception -- that genuinely requires a real decrypted file on disk, so File Vault says so clearly before it happens, instead of pretending it doesn't.