Answers/The life queries
How to keep the photos and last messages of someone you've lost — privately
There is a specific weight to opening a photos app and having a face you loved surface as 'On this day, four years ago' — the algorithm meant well and got it exactly wrong. Some memories are yours to reach for, on your own terms, not to be handed to you by a service optimising for engagement. A sealed folder is the shape of that choice.
What to gather
The photos you want. Text-message exports (both iOS and Android offer ways). Voice notes. Emails, if you kept them. A short letter to yourself explaining why you gathered this — the future you will thank the current you for it.
Sealing it
One folder, sealed. When you want to visit, you unseal; when you're done, you re-seal. Elba is one HTML file that does this without an account or an app store — nothing about this folder ever leaves your laptop.
Consider a passphrase that is meaningful only to you and is not written down anywhere digital. If you also want your family to be able to open it after you, follow the estate-documents pattern.
Questions people actually ask
- What if a photo service already has these on their servers?
- You can leave those there or delete them. The sealed folder is about having your own copy on your own terms.
- How do I stop 'On this day' notifications?
- Most photo services let you exclude specific dates or people from memory features — worth doing regardless.
Take the island
Elba is one HTML file. It runs locally in a Chromium browser, seals a folder with AES-256-GCM, never phones home, and becomes open source on 1 January 2030.
- €49MMXXVI· now ·
- €39MMXXVII2027
- €29MMXXVIII2028
- €19MMXXIX2029
- FreeMMXXX2030
the price falls each year · free to all 1 jan 2030
pay once · no account · nothing leavesRelated answers
- How to make sure your family can find your important files after you die
Digital estate is the folder your executor needs to open the day after. How to make it discoverable, encrypted, and honestly openable.
- How to leave a password to your heirs without giving it to a company
'Legacy contact' features hand your data to a provider. Two low-tech alternatives your executor will actually be able to use.
- Storing love letters, old and new, somewhere no algorithm reads them
A quiet folder for the sentences you meant. How to keep them local, encrypted, and out of every future feature update.