CardPal Support

CardPal keeps your own and your family's passports, ID cards, hospital and insurance numbers, and loyalty cards as cards on your own device, with document photos encrypted — ready to show at a counter in about half a minute.

No network. No account. Nothing uploaded.

Getting help

Email stephen.li@wdbible.org. It is one developer answering, so please include:

• your device and OS version (e.g. iPhone 15, iOS 26.1)
• the CardPal version (Settings → Version)
• what you did, what you expected, and what happened

Because CardPal never sends anything anywhere, there are no server-side logs for me to look at. A clear description is genuinely the only thing I have to go on.

Frequently asked

Where is my data? Can you see it?

On your device only, and no. There are no servers, no accounts, and no network calls anywhere in the app's code — every feature keeps working in airplane mode, which you can check yourself.

(The Android package does carry the INTERNET permission, but CardPal neither declares nor uses it: a library the barcode scanner depends on merges it in at build time. The Privacy Policy explains this in full.)

I forgot my PIN. Can you reset it?

No — and this is by design. There is no server holding a copy of your PIN, so there is no one who can reset it. If you unlock with Face ID or a fingerprint, use that. Otherwise the app offers a factory reset that erases all local data after a 24-hour delay; entering the correct PIN during those 24 hours cancels it.

Keep an encrypted backup. It is the only way to survive a forgotten PIN.

The store's scanner won't read the barcode on my screen

Tap Won't scan? below the barcode. It offers:

• Rotate 90° — many handheld scanners read a vertical line and cannot see a horizontal on-screen barcode
• Copy number — hand the clerk the number instead
• Change barcode format — if the card was typed in rather than scanned, the format may have been guessed wrong
• Read out to the clerk — the number in easy-to-read groups

If a particular store never works, email me the store and the card type. Some laser scanners genuinely cannot read any phone screen; a physical card is the only answer there.

Can I sync between my phone and my partner's phone?

Not today. CardPal has no servers, so there is nothing to sync through. A future version will be able to write its encrypted backup into your own iCloud Drive or Google Drive folder, which covers your devices — but it is not built for sharing one library between two people.

The way to think about CardPal: you are the keeper of your family's documents, not a shared folder.

What is in a backup, and how do I restore it?

Everything: people, cards, numbers, expiry dates, and your document photos. It is a single file encrypted with a password you choose.

To restore: Settings → Restore from backup, pick the file, enter the password. Restoring replaces everything currently on the device.

Two warnings worth repeating:

• If you lose the backup password, the file can never be opened. Save it in a password manager.
• Test a restore before you rely on it. A backup you have never restored is a backup you do not know works.

Can I turn the app lock off?

Yes. The first time you open CardPal it walks you through setting a PIN, and you can choose "Not now"; after that you can turn the lock on or off at any time in Settings → Security. Turning the lock off deletes your PIN, so you are asked for it once first.

Know what you give up: anyone holding your unlocked phone can open CardPal and see every card and photo. What turning it off does not change: document photos, numbers, passport details and notes stay encrypted; entry names, tags, collection names, family members' names and expiry dates were never separately encrypted and rely on the system's app sandbox and your phone's screen lock; exporting a backup still needs its own password; on Android the show screen still blocks screenshots, and on iPhone it still covers the card while the screen is recorded or mirrored. The full list is in Settings → Security → What's encrypted.

Why can't I store passwords or card CVVs in it?

Deliberately out of scope. Password managers do that job properly, and doing it badly alongside documents would make CardPal a worse and riskier app. CardPal holds documents, numbers and loyalty cards — not credentials.

Why does the copy have writing all over it?

Because an unmarked photocopy of a passport is a gift to whoever finds it. The watermark says what the copy is for and when it was made, which is what stops it being reused for something else. If you tell CardPal the purpose ("visa application"), it goes into the watermark — far stronger protection than a generic "personal use only", and it takes five seconds.

Once it is ready there are two actions: Save (to a location you pick) and Share (hand it to the system share sheet). Both take a deliberate tap; CardPal never sends it anywhere on its own, and keeps no copy of it.

The share sheet lets you choose "Save Image", which puts the copy in your photo library — that is your choice, and CardPal only hands the file to the system. CardPal never puts an original there itself: when you share one (see the next question), "Save Image" is taken off the sheet, and CardPal neither has nor asks for permission to write an original to your library.

Can I share the photo itself, instead of a copy?

Yes. While you are looking at a photo, tap Share — in the title bar when you are browsing, or under "More" on the presentation screen — and that one photo goes to the system share sheet: AirDrop it to your Mac, attach it to an email, send it in a messaging app. It is the photo as you stored it: no watermark, because you are sending your own photo rather than a sheet made to be handed across a counter. If you want the marked, A4-laid-out version, use "Make a copy" instead.

Two things to know. The file is called photo-<date>, not after your entry — that name travels with the attachment, and the name you gave a document is nobody else's business. And CardPal takes "Save Image" off this sheet, so there is no one-tap way to drop an original into your photo library. That is the part CardPal controls. The rest of the sheet belongs to iOS and to the apps you have installed — once you hand a photo to one of them, where it goes next is between you and that app, exactly as it is when you send one to a person.

Does it work offline?

It only works offline. There is no online mode.

Why doesn't the reminder tell me which document?

Because it shows up on your lock screen, where anyone holding your phone can read it. "Mom's passport expires in 7 days" tells a stranger what you have and whose it is. iOS gives an app no way to force that preview hidden, so the only reliable protection is a text with nothing in it worth reading. Tap it and the home screen tells you exactly which documents it meant.

Reminders arrive 90, 30 and 7 days before an expiry, at 9am. They are scheduled by your device, so they work with no network — and if several documents fall on the same day, you get one notification, not several.

Supporting development

CardPal is free, with no ads, no subscription, and nothing locked behind a paywall. If it saved you a bad moment at a counter and you would like to support the work, there is a support option — but nothing in the app depends on it, and nothing changes if you skip it.

Known limitations

Stated plainly, because you should not have to discover these yourself:

• No automatic passport recognition. You photograph the data page and type the fields in. Automatic reading is planned but not built.
• Expiry reminders arrive as notifications, but say very little. They tell you how many documents are expiring and in how many days — never which one. Open the app to see which document it means.
• A copy's watermark is part of the image, not selectable text. The PDF holds the rendered page rather than a redrawn one, which is what keeps the PDF and the image identical. If a portal demands text-searchable PDFs, this is not one.
• On iPhone, the show screen can be screenshotted. Android is told to block it at the system level; iOS offers an app no equivalent, so a person holding your unlocked phone could capture a document. Screen recording and mirroring are covered: while either is on, the show screen hides the card. The app-switcher mask still applies on both, and so does the app lock if you have it on. This is a platform limit, not a setting.
• Backups are manual. Nothing is backed up unless you export it.
• One device. No sync yet.