Executive teams
The decisions and approvals that happened in texts, kept where they cannot be quietly edited.
The problem
Executives approve things by text. Months later, the question is who agreed to what and when. By then the thread has been trimmed by a retention setting, one party has a new phone, and the only copy is whatever someone screenshotted.
Why Message Vault helps
- Keeps a per-Mac archive of every message and attachment, on a schedule.
- The manifest is a hash chain. Any edit, deletion, or insertion after sealing breaks the chain from that point on.
- Nothing leaves the Mac. Each executive’s vault is their own, on storage they choose.
- Search by person, phrase, or date range across the whole history.
How to do it
- Install on each executive’s Mac and grant Full Disk Access once.
- Run the first scan, then let the background agent archive incrementally.
- Seal the manifest at each quarter end and keep the chain head with the board records.
Message Vault reads the Messages database on a Mac and the iPhone backups made on that Mac with Finder or iTunes. It does not pull messages from a phone over the air. The manifest proves the archive has not changed since it was sealed. It does not prove the archive was complete or truthful at that moment, and its timestamp is the Mac’s own clock, not a trusted time source. It cannot show that a message was sent to anyone who is not in the archive.
$29 per year, per Mac. 14-day free trial. Cancel any time. Requires macOS 14 or later.
Other use cases: Family memories · Corporations · Legal cases · Custody disputes · Estate and executors · Journalists and researchers · Switching Macs or phones · macOS deleted my messages · Small business owners