How to Save Your Vaccine Card on Your Smartphone

With a handful of cities and plenty of private businesses now requiring proof of vaccination to admit patrons, it’s likely you’ll need to present your COVID-19 vaccine card to someone at some point. Unfortunately, these cards are too large for most wallets and pants pockets, and likely to get lost or damaged in the shuffle—which is why you may want to keep a digital copy on your smartphone instead.

So what are your options to easily (and securely) store your vaccine record digitally?

Take a photo of it

The simplest option is to take a photo of your vaccination card and keep it in your photo library. It’ll likely be visible in your library or photo stream by default, so if you want more privacy, you’ll have to go through a few extra steps to hide it.

On iOS, tap the Share icon beneath the photo and select Hide > Hide Photo from the pop-up menu to put the image in your Hidden folder. This album can be found under the Album tab > Utilities > Hidden. You can also go a step further and hide your Hidden album via Settings > Photos. Toggle off the Hidden Album option—you’ll just need to toggle it back on if you want to view your photos later.

If you have a Samsung, you can create a secure folder for your photos that’s unlocked with biometrics. Enable this under your phone Settings > Biometrics and security > Secure Folder. Then select your vaccine record photo, tap the More icon, and choose Move to Secure Folder.

You can also archive images you don’t want to access often in Google Photos. Simply select the photo and tap More > Move to Archive. You can find them later under Library > Archive.

Use a password manager or notes app

Most password managers have secure document storage, so if you use one of these services you can keep vaccination records behind a secure login and access it on any of your devices. Other notes and document scanning apps—Adobe Scan and Evernote, for example—may be good alternatives, since you at least have to log in to access your saved images.

On iOS, you can even use Notes to password-protect individual scanned items. Open a new note, select the Camera > Scan Documents and scan your vaccine card. After you save the scan, click the three horizontal dots and tap the Lock button to set a password or enable biometrics.

Download your state’s digital document app

A number of states support health record-specific apps residents can use to store and access their digital vaccine cards: New Jersey and Utah use Docket, while New York has Excelsior Pass. Others have enabled storage in general digital document apps—LA Wallet in Louisiana, for example, now supports COVID-19 cards. California residents can sign up to receive a link to their digital vaccine record, which can be stored in Google Pay or saved as a screenshot and kept as a photo.

There are also apps like VaxYes that aren’t limited to specific states. And Samsung Galaxy users can download CommonHealth for vaccine record storage and add the card to Samsung Pay, while general Android users can opt to keep their vaccine cards in Google Pay.