Terms of Use

Alcove - Vault for Everything

Effective Date: September 16, 2026

Welcome to Alcove, a mobile application designed to give you a private, encrypted space on your own device — for your photos, videos, notes, and more. These Terms of Use ("Terms") govern your access and use of the Alcove app ("App"), provided by Timothé Ameline ("we", "us", or "our"), operating under the brand name Mars Interactive. Mars Interactive is not a registered legal entity, it is only a developer nickname.

By downloading, accessing, or using Alcove, you agree to be bound by these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the App.

1. Eligibility

You must be at least 13 years old to use the App. If you are under the legal age of majority in your jurisdiction, you must have parental or guardian permission to use the App.

2. User Responsibilities

You are solely responsible for choosing, remembering, and safeguarding your PIN, master password, decoy PIN, and any recovery codes you generate. The App has no password-recovery mechanism beyond those codes — see Section 4.
You are responsible for the physical security of your device and for anyone else you allow to access it while unlocked.
If you export an encrypted backup of your vault, you are responsible for where you store it and for keeping the credentials needed to import it back.
You are responsible for the URLs you add to Sites and for your own conduct on any site you visit through the App — Alcove is a sandboxed browser for pages you choose to open, not a curator or guarantor of their content.
You agree not to misuse, reverse engineer, or exploit the App in ways not intended by its design.
You agree not to use the App for illegal or harmful purposes.

3. Features and Limitations

Alcove provides a suite of features including but not limited to:

Encrypted local photo and video vault, organized into albums, with a slideshow viewer
Face ID, PIN, and master password authentication, with single-use recovery codes for a forgotten master password
A decoy PIN that opens a separate, hidden notes space instead of your real vault
Encrypted export and import, so you can create and restore your own backup of your vault
Sites: a sandboxed in-app browser for bookmarked web pages, each with its own isolated, encrypted storage

We reserve the right to add, remove, or modify features at any time.

4. No Data Recovery

Alcove is built so that no one but you can unlock your vault — including us. If you generate recovery codes (Settings → Recovery Codes) and keep them somewhere safe, you can use one to reset a forgotten master password. If you forget your PIN and your master password, and have no recovery code left to use, the contents of your vault are permanently and irreversibly lost. There is no password reset beyond your own recovery codes, no backend override, and no support process that can recover it. This is a deliberate design choice, not a limitation we intend to fix. By using the App, you accept this risk.

5. Account and Data

Alcove does not require account creation or user registration. All user data — photos, videos, albums, notes, and site bookmarks — is stored locally on your device, encrypted, and is never transmitted to our servers or third parties, with the narrow exception that opening a site you've added necessarily sends a request to that site's own server, the same as visiting it in any browser (see the Privacy Policy for the full disclosure). Your vault is deliberately excluded from iCloud and device backups and is bound to the specific device it was created on. You may create your own encrypted backup at any time via Settings → Export Vault, and restore it via Import; absent that, uninstalling the App, or losing or replacing your device, will permanently delete everything in your vault.

6. Intellectual Property

All content, branding, and code associated with the App is the property of Timothé Ameline and protected by applicable copyright and trademark laws.

You may not:

Copy or reproduce the App or its content
Create derivative works based on the App
Resell or redistribute the App

7. Disclaimers

The App is provided "as-is" without warranties of any kind. We do not guarantee:

That the App will be error-free or uninterrupted
That it will meet your expectations or achieve any particular outcome
That data, once lost through a forgotten credential, device loss, or uninstallation, can be recovered in any way
The availability, safety, or content of any site you choose to open through Sites — that content belongs to and is controlled by the site itself, not by us

8. Limitation of Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, we shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, or consequential damages resulting from your use of the App, including but not limited to loss of photos, videos, notes, or other data stored within it.

9. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. Changes will be communicated via app updates or notices. Continued use after changes constitutes acceptance.

10. Contact

For support or legal questions, contact us at mars_interactive@proton.me.

Thank you for using Alcove! We sincerely hope it gives you a private space you can trust to keep what you put in it exactly that — private.