v3.1
29 Jun 2026Anonycord.ipa (sha256 e9424316…13ee2270)Full changelog →
Film what you can’t be seen filming.
Anonycord is a free, open-source iOS recorder for people who cannot afford to be seen filming. Nothing appears on screen while it runs, so a phone lying face-up on a table still looks like a phone lying face-up on a table. The footage is written to the device and nowhere else.
Unsigned build, signed by you at install time with your own Apple ID. iOS 15 and later.
VAULTLOCKED
DISPLAY OFF
Why this exists
In more places every year, documenting something is treated as the offence. Not publishing it. Documenting it. And the person holding the phone is given away by the phone: a lit screen in a dark crowd, an arm raised at an angle everyone recognises, a red dot at the top of a display that anyone standing behind you can read.
Anonycord takes away that signal. It cannot make recording lawful where it is not, and it cannot help a device that has already been taken. What it removes is the visible cue that recording is happening, so a reporter at a checkpoint, in a courtroom corridor, or sitting with a source who agreed to be recorded but cannot be seen agreeing to it, can keep the file without announcing that a file exists.
c22dev wrote the original app and then stopped working on it. I forked it and have been extending it since: blackout, the vault, hardware triggers, dual capture. It stays free, and it stays GPL-3.0.
Jack Ghafari
2.1SILENT CAPTURE
You operate it by touch
The whole screen is the start and stop control, so there is no button to hunt for in the dark, in a pocket, or under a jacket. One haptic pulse means it started. Two mean it stopped. Nothing lights up at either end.
It records 4K or 1080p video on the wide, selfie, or ultrawide camera, audio on its own with adjustable sample rate and channels, and stills.
STATUS BARBRIGHTNESS 100%HOME INDICATORCONTROLS
2.2BLACKOUT MODE
The screen goes dark. The recording doesn’t.
Blackout takes away the status bar, the home indicator and every control, then floors the system brightness. On an OLED panel a black pixel is an unlit pixel, so across a dark room the handset reads as switched off rather than as a camera. Tap anywhere to start or stop. Hold to reach settings.
Blackout, in detail →● RECORDING
2.3DUAL CAPTUREIPHONE XS/XR AND LATER
Two cameras, two files
Both cameras run at once and write two separate clips rather than one picture-in-picture composite. The rear camera holds the scene. The front one holds whoever is dealing with the person holding the phone, which is often the part that matters afterwards.
Dual capture, in detail →2.4TRIGGERS
Start without touching the screen
Arm the hardware trigger and a press of a volume button starts recording. iOS normally throws its volume overlay up on top of whatever is on screen; while the trigger is armed, that overlay is suppressed, so nothing flashes over the black panel. The gesture looks like turning the volume down.
Auto-start does the same thing without any press at all, a set number of seconds after the app opens.
Triggers, in detail →2.5THE VAULT
A recording that isn’t in the camera roll
Vault recordings are written inside the app’s own sandbox. They do not show up in Photos, they do not show up in Files, and they are never synced anywhere. Opening the vault takes Face ID.
One thing to know before you rely on it: sandbox storage goes when the app goes. Delete Anonycord and the vault is deleted with it.
The vault, in detail →WHERE THE FOOTAGE GOES
One route, and it ends on the phone
A recording goes from the camera to storage on the same device. There is no account to create and no server waiting at the other end, because the app carries no networking code at all.
That is worth being precise about: this is not a privacy setting that ships switched off. There is nothing there to switch on. Getting footage off the phone is something you do deliberately, by hand.
Read the full threat model →INSTALLING IT
There is no App Store version
That is deliberate. A store listing is a public index entry: searchable, ranked, reviewed, and visible to anyone curious about what this app does and how many people are carrying it. Staying off it keeps distribution quiet, and keeps the app circulating among people who need it rather than advertised to everyone who would rather they didn’t have it.
GitHub Actions builds the IPA from public source on every tag and stops short of signing it. Your sideloading tool adds the signature with your own Apple ID, on your own device. iOS 15 or later.
ALTSTORESIDESTORESIDELOADLYTROLLSTORE
LATEST RELEASE
↓ IPA
Every asset publishes a SHA-256 digest. Hash the file you downloaded and compare it before you sideload anything, particularly if you picked the IPA up from somewhere other than this page.
If you are working on something
If you report for a living and the app is missing something you need in the field, tell me what it is. Requests from people actually doing the work are the ones that get built.
Signal, not email. An email thread is a record sitting on somebody else’s server, and you should not have to create one to ask a question about a recorder.
SIGNAL
Y01.01
Everything is public, including the CI workflow that produces the release builds, so you or anyone you trust can audit what this app does before you carry it anywhere. If you are reviewing it on behalf of a newsroom and want to talk to someone while you do, use the same handle.
The conversation around what gets built next is narrower: feature requests and roadmap discussion are limited to verified media professionals and security researchers. If that is you, say so when you write.
QUESTIONS
A free, open-source iOS app that records video, audio and stills without putting a camera interface on the screen. The display stays dark while it films and a haptic pulse confirms the start and the stop. It exists for the case where being seen recording is the risk, which is most often a reporter documenting something that somebody would prefer went undocumented.
No. There are no accounts, no analytics and no server, and the app contains no networking code that could carry a file anywhere. Recordings go to your photo library, to the on-device vault, or both. The single exception is a library save with iCloud Photos enabled, where Apple's ordinary photo sync applies exactly as it would to any other video.
Partly because it is a deliberate choice about visibility. A store listing is a public entry in a catalogue that anyone can search, rank and watch: it advertises what this app does, and roughly how many people are carrying it, to everyone including the people with an interest in stopping them. Distribution stays quieter without one, and there is no listing for anyone to file a complaint against or have removed in a jurisdiction that decides it would rather this app were not available. Instead it ships as an unsigned IPA built by GitHub Actions from public source, and you install it with a sideloading tool such as AltStore, SideStore, Sideloadly or TrollStore, which signs it with your own Apple ID on your own device.