Private Archive

For families. For keepsakes. For peace of mind.

The family album that nobody else can look through.

Private Archive is a quiet, gentle place to keep your photos, videos and important documents safe — scrambled up so well that even we can't peek.

Download Private Archive How it works

No email. No password. No account to forget.

Why we built this for you

You probably have twenty years of photos sitting on a phone, a laptop, or one of those memory sticks in a drawer. The kids' school plays. Grandma's recipes. The scan of your passport. You don't want any of that gone — and you don't really want a giant company sifting through it either. We made Private Archive so you can put all of it somewhere safe, somewhere truly yours, without needing to be a computer expert about it.

How it works

Three small steps. Then it just runs in the background.

  1. 1. Pick your folders

    Open Private Archive on your computer and tick the things you want kept safe — your Photos folder, your Documents folder, the videos you took at the beach. Whatever matters to you.

  2. 2. Your computer scrambles them

    Before a single byte leaves your house, your computer turns your files into unreadable gobbledegook. We only ever see the scrambled-up bytes — never what's inside. Even we couldn't unscramble them. That's the whole point.

  3. 3. We tuck them away, quietly

    The scrambled-up bytes travel out over a private network called Tor, so nobody can see where they're coming from. Where we keep them after that doesn't matter — they're nonsense to anyone who gets near them, including us.

The trade-off, in plain words

Here's the honest bit. We want you to know this before you sign up, not after.

When you set up Private Archive, your computer makes a small key file and keeps it for you. That key file is what unlocks your archive. It's also the only thing in the world that can.

We don't have a copy. We can't make you a new one. There's no "forgot password" button, because there's no password and no email on file — that's the whole point.

So please: when the app suggests you save a backup of your key file somewhere safe — a USB stick in a drawer, a copy at your parents' house — actually do it. Two copies, two places. That's all it takes.

Why is it set up this way? Because it means nobody — not us, not a hacker who breaks into our servers, not whoever might own this company in ten years' time — can get into your archive without your key. That's a feature, not a bug. It's what "private" actually means.

Good for keeping

  • 20 years of family photos
  • Scans of important documents
  • Video clips of the kids
  • Your unfinished novel
  • Wedding photos and old letters
  • Voice notes and audio recordings
  • Emails you want to keep forever
  • Anything you'd hate to lose

Pricing, in friendly numbers

No subscription, no auto-renewal, no card on file. You keep a small balance, and it counts down as you use the service.

You buy a small balance

Pay once, in Monero — a private kind of digital cash.

There's no monthly bill and no card details to hand over. You buy as little or as much as you'd like, whenever it suits you.

It counts down as you go

A little bit comes off your balance for what you keep with us.

No surprises, no overage charges, no awkward upgrades. The app shows you what's left, plain as day.

Top up whenever you want

When the balance gets low, you add a bit more.

No subscription. No card. No "we couldn't bill you" emails. Just top it up when you feel like it, and stop whenever you'd like to.

A friendly note about Monero: it's a kind of digital cash that's anonymous by design, which is why we use it. If you've never bought any before, the app links you to a few easy guides. There's no minimum top-up, and you can stop at any time — your archive simply waits there until you come back.

Download Private Archive

Pick the version that matches your computer. Not sure? Most newer Macs use the Apple chip; most Windows PCs are 64-bit.

Mac with Apple chip

For M1, M2, M3 and newer. .tar.gz archive.

Mac with Intel chip

For older Intel-based Macs. .tar.gz archive.

Linux

Standard 64-bit Linux. .tar.gz archive.

Linux on Pi or similar

For Raspberry Pi and other ARM boards.

Windows

For 64-bit Windows 10 and 11. .zip archive.

Windows on ARM

For ARM-based Windows (Surface Pro X and similar). .zip archive.

FreeBSD

amd64 (Intel/AMD) and arm64. .tar.gz archive.

FreeBSD on ARM

For arm64 FreeBSD. .tar.gz archive.

OpenBSD

amd64 (Intel/AMD). .tar.gz archive.

OpenBSD on ARM

For arm64 OpenBSD. .tar.gz archive.

Source code — for the curious

How the scrambling works, line by line. For people who want to look.

Check it's the real thing

A small file you can use to verify your download is genuine.

After downloading, your computer will walk you through setup. The whole thing takes about five minutes. Under the hood we use well-known, audited tools* — but you don't need to know any of that to use it.

Install & keep up to date

Every channel below installs the same reproducible, signed binaries. Verify direct downloads against SHA256SUMS; the apt, dnf and pacman repositories are GPG repo-signed with fingerprint 4792 23EA 8405 287A 11FB B12E 02A7 7A1E EDD0 F111.

Any platform — one line

curl -fsSL https://privatearchive.xyz/install.sh | bash

Or download a tarball for macOS, Linux, Windows, FreeBSD or OpenBSD (amd64 + arm64) — and the source — from the latest release.

Debian / Ubuntu — apt

curl -fsSL https://privatearchive.xyz/apt/release-key.asc | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/privatearchive.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/privatearchive.gpg] https://privatearchive.xyz/apt stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/privatearchive.list
sudo apt update && sudo apt install privatebackup

Fedora / RHEL — dnf

sudo curl -fsSL https://privatearchive.xyz/dnf/privatearchive.repo -o /etc/yum.repos.d/privatearchive.repo
sudo dnf install privatebackup

Arch — pacman

curl -fsSL https://privatearchive.xyz/pacman/release-key.asc | sudo pacman-key --add -
sudo pacman-key --lsign-key 479223EA8405287A11FBB12E02A77A1EEDD0F111
printf '\n[privatearchive]\nServer = https://privatearchive.xyz/pacman\n' | sudo tee -a /etc/pacman.conf
sudo pacman -Sy privatebackup

macOS — Homebrew

brew install https://privatearchive.xyz/brew/privatebackup.rb

Windows — Scoop

scoop install https://privatearchive.xyz/scoop/privatebackup.json