Locket Widget

Is Locket safe for kids?

For a social app, mostly yes. Locket puts photos from up to 20 friends straight onto your home screen, and that small, closed circle removes most of what makes teen social media risky: no public feed, no follower counts, no strangers sliding into the comments. The trade-offs are quieter. Locket tracks users for advertising, publishes almost nothing about its security, and a photo cannot be pulled back once it lands on a friend's phone. We score it 59/100, above Snapchat (52) and well above Instagram (40).

The app is big for something so simple. TechCrunch reported in August 2025 that Locket had passed 80 million downloads and 9 million daily users, and that the company had been profitable since 2024.

Who can see your photos on Locket?

Only people on your friend list, and the list stops at 20. Both sides have to accept a friend request, usually sent by text or link, so a stranger cannot find your profile and start watching. Reactions and replies go to the person who posted, not to an audience.

That design matters more than any setting. Most of the harm on teen social apps comes from reach: strangers who can message, public posts that travel, ranking that rewards the most extreme content. Locket has very little reach to abuse.

Two features widen the circle a little. Celebrity Lockets, launched in August 2025, let artists send photos to between 1,000 and 15,000 fans, who add them through a link or search. And Rollcall, a weekly recap that takes over the lock screen on Sundays, pushes users to share more of their week. TechCrunch reported that about 80% of Rollcall's early active users were Gen Alpha, which tells you how young the audience is.

What Locket collects and shares

Less than the big platforms, but more than the app's gentle image suggests. Apple's privacy label says identifiers may be used to track you across apps and websites owned by other companies. For third-party advertising, Locket lists coarse location, device ID, product interaction and advertising data. Linked to your identity, it also holds your name, phone number, email, contacts, photos and purchase history.

The privacy policy fills in the rest. Locket collects your phone number, email, full name and birthday (day and month), reads your contacts if you allow it, and shares your IP address, advertising ID, device type and the links you click with advertising companies "for interest-based advertising". Google Play's label agrees that device IDs are shared for advertising. Locket does not ask for precise GPS location, which keeps it clear of the worst location risks.

The policy was last updated in November 2023, before Celebrity Lockets and Rollcall existed. That is a long gap for an app that adds features this quickly.

The photo you cannot take back

This is the point to explain to a teenager before anything else. Locket's own policy says that once a photo is sent, it cannot be deleted from other users' phones, even if you delete it from your own. Friends keep a history of every Locket you have sent them, and the app builds monthly recap videos from it.

So the 20-friend cap protects against strangers, not against a friendship that goes wrong. A photo sent to a boyfriend or a group of classmates stays with them. Locket is not end-to-end encryptedEnd-to-end encryptionEncryption in which only the sender and the recipient can read a message. The company running the service cannot see its content.More in the glossary, and the company does not describe how long it keeps photos on its own servers.

Security is mostly undocumented

Google Play says data is encrypted in transit, and that is about all the public detail there is. Accounts are tied to a phone number, the privacy policy promises only "reasonable" safeguards and says it cannot guarantee security, and we found no security page, bug bounty or two-step login option. We also found no reported breach of Locket user data. For an app whose users had shared more than 10 billion photos by August 2025, the lack of detail is the main reason security sits at 52.

How to set Locket up for a teen

1. Go through the friend list together. Everyone on it should be someone your teen knows offline, and the list does not need to reach 20.
2. Talk about the no-unsend rule. If a photo would be a problem in a classmate's hands next year, it should not be sent.
3. Check which Celebrity Lockets have been added, since those bring outside content onto the home screen.
4. Deny contacts access if you prefer to add friends by link; the app works without it.
5. On iPhone, refuse Locket's tracking request, or turn off app tracking requests in the phone's privacy settings, to limit ad tracking.
6. Decide on Locket Gold before a teen does: it is a recurring subscription billed through the app store.

How we scored it

Scams and harmful content (68) is the strongest factor, because a closed group of 20 friends leaves little room for strangers. Regulatory record (86) is clean but reflects little scrutiny. Privacy (50) and security (52) hold the score down: Locket tracks users for ads and says almost nothing about how it protects photos. For a similar app with a public side, compare BeReal.