Lockboxy vs locked notes on iPhone: which is better for private notes?

You open a note, tap the More button and choose Lock. Notes then asks for your iPhone passcode or a separate Notes password, with Face ID or Touch ID as a shortcut. The body of the note is encrypted and hidden until you unlock it, and locked notes sync through iCloud to your other Apple devices.

There are limits: the first line stays visible in the list, and you cannot lock shared notes, notes with tags, or notes with attachments such as video, audio or PDFs. Notes stored in a non-iCloud account cannot be locked either. The full setup is in how to lock notes on iPhone.

Private Notes in Lockboxy sit inside the vault, behind a passcode separate from your iPhone passcode. Every note — title and body — is encrypted with AES-256-GCM on the device, saved automatically, and listed by month and year. Notes are unlimited on the free plan.

The same vault has a Wallet for passwords, cards and 2FA codes, and Files for scanned documents, so a note about an account can sit next to the account's details instead of being the only place they are written down.

• It costs nothing and needs nothing installed.
• Your notes are on your iPad and Mac automatically, and an iCloud backup covers them.
• You can collaborate: shared notes, mentions, tags and folders all work — just not on locked notes.
• Search, scanning straight into a note, sketches and checklists are all built in.

If you only lock a few notes and nobody else knows your custom Notes password, stay with Notes.

• The title of the note is itself sensitive, and renaming it every time is not realistic.
• Someone knows your iPhone passcode and you chose to lock notes with it — switching to a custom Notes password fixes that too, so try that first.
• You want notes, passwords, 2FA codes and document scans behind one passcode, not spread across three apps.
• You prefer the content never to be in iCloud.

It is common, and a locked note with a custom password is far better than an unlocked one. But a note is just text: copying a password leaves it on the clipboard, and a list of recovery codes has no structure. iOS already includes a password manager for website logins, which is the right place for most passwords.

For recovery codes, PINs and things that do not fit a password manager, keep them in an encrypted place you control and keep a second copy offline — see how to store 2FA backup codes safely.

There is no automatic import from Notes, so move only what needs it:

1. 1Unlock the note in Notes and copy its text.
2. 2In Lockboxy, open Notes, create a note and paste. For a password or 2FA code, create a Wallet entry instead.
3. 3Back in Notes, delete the original, then open Recently Deleted in Notes and delete it there too.

Lockboxy keeps the whole note private, not only its body, and puts it next to the Wallet, Files, photos and audio in one encrypted vault with its own passcode. Copying a Wallet field clears it from the clipboard shortly after, and a saved password can be checked against known breaches by sending only a short anonymized fingerprint.

The trade-off is the same as with a custom Notes password, only stricter: forget the passcode and the content cannot be opened unless you created a Recovery Key (Premium) beforehand. More in the Lockboxy FAQ; for photos, see Lockboxy vs the Hidden album.