Which Documents to Keep on Your Phone, and Which Never To

Quick answer: Keep copies that help you recover a lost document, such as a passport page, insurance policy, or prescription, but never store passwords, PINs, recovery codes, or bank-card photos in a camera roll. Put useful copies in a separate, locked, organised place and keep originals where they belong.

Most people's important documents live in three places: a drawer, a camera roll, and an email account. That arrangement works right up until the moment it matters — when a passport goes missing abroad, when a form needs a policy number at short notice, or when someone else has to find your details on your behalf.

The instinct is either "photograph everything" or "never put that on a phone." Neither is right. The useful question is narrower: if someone else got hold of this copy, what could they do with it?

Worth keeping

Documents where a copy helps you and doesn't hand anyone else much:

• Passport photo page. The single most useful thing to have a copy of. Replacing a lost passport abroad is dramatically faster with the number and issue date to hand.
• Driving licence.
• Travel insurance policy — the number and the emergency contact line, which is the bit you need at 3am.
• Vaccination records.
• Prescriptions and a list of current medication, with doses. Useful in an emergency, and at borders where medication needs documenting.
• Home and car insurance policy numbers.
• Warranties and receipts for anything expensive.
• Vehicle documents — registration, MOT, service history.
• Wills and deeds — as a reference copy. The original still has to exist on paper.
• Pet records — microchip number, vaccination history.

The common thread: these are documents where the information is what's useful, and where possession of a copy isn't sufficient to impersonate you or spend your money.

Not worth keeping

• Photos of bank cards. Card number, expiry and the security code together are everything needed to spend. There is no scenario where having a photo helps you more than it helps a thief.
• Passwords, PINs, recovery codes in a photo or note. Use a password manager, which is built for exactly this and encrypts it.
• Full bank account details alongside identity documents. Either alone is manageable. The combination is a complete identity-theft kit.
• Other people's documents without asking. Your partner's passport is their decision.
• Anything you're contractually not allowed to copy. Some work documents fall here.

The distinction is between a document that proves what is true and one that grants the ability to act. Copy the first. Never copy the second.

Where it's stored matters as much as what

A photo in your camera roll is in every backup, synced to every signed-in device, and visible in any app you've granted photo access to — which over the years is a lot of apps. It also sits in the same scrolling grid as everything else, so finding it under pressure means scrolling past six months of photos.

Better properties for this kind of thing:

• Separate from the camera roll, so photo permissions don't reach it.
• Locked behind Face ID, so a handed-over unlocked phone doesn't expose it.
• Local to the device by default, rather than sitting on a third party's server.
• Actually organised, so it's findable in thirty seconds.

That's the shape of our app HouseholdVault — a local-first vault with household categories, expiry reminders, and no account. Nothing is uploaded, which for this category of document is the point. It also tracks expiry dates, which matters because a passport that expires two months before a trip is a problem best discovered early.

Expiry dates are the underrated part

Passports, driving licences, visas, insurance policies, MOTs, professional certifications, residence permits — all of them expire, none of them warn you, and several of them take weeks to renew.

Many countries also require six months' validity remaining on a passport at entry, so "not expired" isn't the bar. A reminder three months out is worth more than a perfectly organised copy of the document itself.

Keep an emergency subset

Beyond storage, it's worth having a very short list someone could use on your behalf: blood type and allergies, current medication, next of kin, GP, insurance emergency line.

The test is whether a paramedic or a family member could find it on a locked phone. iOS Medical ID is built for this and shows on the lock screen — start there, and keep the longer detail behind authentication.

Paper still matters

Digital copies are for reference and recovery. They aren't originals. Birth certificates, wills, deeds and share certificates still need to physically exist somewhere findable, and someone other than you needs to know where that is.

A perfectly organised digital vault is no help at all if the person who needs it doesn't know it exists.