Secure Android program for photos?

Question

Can you please recommend a secure Android app to take photos of sensitive documents?

By secure I mean open-source, reliable/trustworthy.

My stock Android camera app syncs photos to Samsung cloud. This is okay for the most part, but I want to take photos of some documents that I don't want to sync to the cloud. I can turn OFF the sync temporary (and turn ON after transferring away the files), but I'm looking for a dedicated app for sensitive photos. Because with stock app I might forget to turn off sync and accidentally upload the files.

The app (or solution) should allow me to transfer/access the files manually by connecting phone to computer. And also allow a zip Android app to access and zip-up the photos.

Google Play store has many photo apps, but I can't tell which are trustworthy.

Thanks for any suggestions or solutions for this.

Answer 1

For starters, you can use Open Camera. Please see my answer here for the general recommendation, and let me focus on your requirement: You will need to separate the photos taken with this "other camera" from those taken with the "stock camera", as otherwise they are just sync'd along¹. Open Camera allows you to freely define a directory to store its photos in, but that setting is a bit hard to find: Go to Settings › More camera controls and watch out for the item with the floppy-disk symbol. Tap that, and you should see something like this:

^{click image for larger variant}

Toggling on the item "Storage Access Framework" below the disk symbol before tapping it should enable you navigating your entire storage to find a place outside /sdcard/DCIM which is hopefully save from Samsung's sync.

For a throughout review of the app (comparing it to another candidate, MX Camera), you might wish to see Camera MX vs Open Camera: Duel of Android Photography Apps. For a quick getting-started, just take a look at the app's help page.

Why especially Open Camera? For one, I'm a happy user of that app. Then, it comes for free and is open source. It's also (one of) the best camera app(s) for Android – certainly the best I've seen so far. And you can get it at the privacy-focused F-Droid² store³. So I can warmly recommend this one – not just for its offering a freely chosable storage location, but also for its features and its quality.

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¹ _{sync isn't managed by the camera but by Samsung's framework watching the /sdcard/DCIM folder, with settings in the Gallery app}
² _{disclosure: I'm one of the F-Droid maintainers}
³ _{you can also get it from Play Store – but honestly, why should you? ;)}