VaultDrive vs Elements
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
VaultDrive
Securely back up photos, videos, and files directly to a USB drive without needing cloud storage. Create private, offline backups you control, freeing up phone space and protecting your memories.
- Backup photos, videos, and files to USB
- No cloud upload required
- Private offline backups
- Download iCloud originals before backup
- Review selection before copying
- Track backup progress
- Resume interrupted backups
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VaultDrive helps you back up your important photos, videos, albums, files, and documents directly to an external USB drive. No cloud upload required. No monthly cloud storage needed. Just connect a compatible USB drive, choose what you want to save, and create a private offline backup you control. VaultDrive can back up items already available on your iPhone without internet. If some photos or videos are stored only in iCloud, you can choose to download the originals before backup. Wi‑Fi is recommended for large iCloud downloads. Why use VaultDrive? • Back up photos, videos, albums, files, and documents to an external drive • Save selected albums, files, and documents • Back up directly to USB without cloud upload • Optionally download iCloud-only originals before backup • Review your selection before copying • Track backup progress in real time • See copied, skipped, and completed files • Resume safely if a backup is interrupted • Keep an extra copy of important memories VaultDrive is useful when you want to free up phone storage, protect family photos, save travel videos, keep documents offline, or create a personal backup without uploading everything to cloud storage. How it works: 1. Connect a compatible external USB drive 2. Choose photos, videos, albums, files, or documents 3. Review your selection 4. Start backup 5. Keep your files stored on your drive Important: VaultDrive backs up user-selected, accessible photos, videos, files, and documents. It does not create a full iPhone system backup. For large backups, keep the app open for the fastest and most reliable transfer.
Elements
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Aesthetic widgets that match — because you designed them that way. Most widget apps hand you a pile of unrelated widgets. Elements gives you a design system: set the typeface, the accent, the background and the density once, and 32 kinds of widget wear it — on the Home Screen, the Lock Screen, StandBy, CarPlay, and on your Mac. 145 designed faces. 206 backgrounds, 118 of them photographs. 12 accent colours, or your own. 180 finished looks you can apply in one tap and then keep tweaking. WIDGETS THAT KNOW SOMETHING • Weather written as a sentence — "31° now, feels 35°. Haze till 6pm." • Your next event, your month at a glance, and how long until the next thing • A groceries list you tick off from the Home Screen • Steps, distance and sleep, read from Health • Sunrise, sunset, the moon's phase, and how much daylight you lost since yesterday • Prayer times, computed on device from five published methods • Currency at the day's published reference rate • Battery, storage, world clocks, countdowns, a verse, a word, your own feeds CUT OUT A SUBJECT AND STICK IT ON YOUR SCREEN Pick a photo and Elements lifts the subject out of it — no background, just the thing. Size it, turn it, nudge it, give it a paper edge. Keep a shelf of them and let the widget rotate through. MINI-APPS YOU FILL YOURSELF Habits you check off. Tallies you count. Subscriptions with renewal reminders. A focus timer. A fasting window. Readings your own Shortcuts write into. A canvas you compose from blocks. All of it stays on your phone. FED BY YOUR SHORTCUTS Four Shortcuts actions let your automations write straight into a widget: update a reading, check in a habit, adjust a counter, set a canvas block. State how often your shortcut runs and the widget will say "as of 9:41" when it misses — a stale number never poses as a fresh one. CORRECT, OR IT TELLS YOU WHY The most common complaint about widgets is that they go stale, blank, or wrong. Elements treats that as a feature to build, not a bug to apologise for. Every widget knows how fresh its data is and says so. Every failure is named — "no location fix", "offline", "not allowed" — instead of one shrug. There is a Widget Health screen that shows what actually reloaded today against the system's own budget. NOTHING HERE IS A SCORE No badges. No XP. No streak repairs to buy. No confetti, no leaderboards, no red marks for a day you missed — a missed day is an empty dot. The reward is that the number is right and the typography is good. THREE THEMES, LIGHT AND DARK Ink Bento is near-black panes and feather numerals. Dawn Glass is warm paper. Pop is flat saturated colour. Every design can pin its own theme and its own light/dark, so one widget can be dark while another follows your phone. PRIVACY Calendar, Reminders, Health and everything you type stay on your device. Health access is read-only and the widget extension never touches it. Weather sends your location — or the place you pin — to Apple to get a forecast, and a few widgets fetch public data like exchange rates or the headlines from feeds you add yourself. There are no accounts, no analytics and no tracking. Four finished widgets — clock, weather, next event, battery and storage — fully styleable, no ads, no watermarks. Elements Pro unlocks the rest of the catalog, saved designs, and the mini-apps. Terms of use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is ads: VaultDrive at none against Elements's shown. VaultDrive also leads on iOS requirement (17.0 vs 26.0). Elements's advantage is update cadence (every 3 days vs every 3 weeks). On price, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. VaultDrive sells 3 one-off in-app purchases and Elements sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $2.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
VaultDrive ships an update every 3 weeks, Elements every 3 days. Both last shipped on September 17, 2026.
| Parameter | VaultDrive | Elements |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 3.0 (2 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 50.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 2 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 3 weeks | Every 3 days — better |
| Ads | No — better | Yes |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | — |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone, iPad — better |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 — better | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 6 MB | 96 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Coticsy | Touseef Hassan Nasir |
In-app purchases
VaultDrive
- VaultDrive: USB Backup$4.99
- VaultDrive: USB Backup$9.99
- VaultDrive: USB Backup$19.99
Elements
- Elements Pro Monthly$2.991 Month
- Elements Pro Yearly1 Month trial$19.991 Year
- Elements Pro Lifetime$49.99









