About App Purchase Vault
An independent pre-launch project building an Android app that turns your own Google Takeout export into a searchable archive of your Google Play purchases. This page explains who is behind it and how the guides are written.
What App Purchase Vault is
App Purchase Vault is a small, independent project, not a company. There is no team page here because there is no team to put on one. The product is a single Android app, currently in pre-launch, that reads a Google Takeout export you create yourself and turns it into a searchable archive of your Google Play purchases: apps, games, in-app purchases and subscriptions, with dates, prices and totals.
Why it exists
Google keeps your Play purchase history, but it is built for looking up a recent order, not for answering "what did I buy in 2017" or "how much have I spent in total". The order history has no search and no date jump, so old purchases are reachable only by scrolling. The data exists in an export you can request at any time; what has been missing is something that reads it comfortably.
Independent, and not affiliated with Google
App Purchase Vault is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Google LLC. "Google", "Google Play" and "Google Takeout" are used descriptively to name the services the guides discuss, and they are trademarks of Google LLC. The app asks for no Google sign-in and requests no access to your Google account: you create the export yourself, download it yourself, and hand the file to the app.
How the guides are researched
These guides describe someone else's product, which changes without notice. The method is deliberately conservative:
- Official documentation first. Where Google publishes an answer in Google Account Help, Google Play Help or the Takeout interface itself, that is the source used, and it is linked from the guide.
- Available flows are walked through where they can be reached without a Google account belonging to someone else. Steps that could not be checked directly are described as what Google documents, not as what was observed.
- Uncertain behaviour is not presented as guaranteed. Export contents, timings and what a given account contains vary by account age, region and product. Where that is true, the guides say so instead of quoting a single number.
- Guides are revisited when Google changes the relevant service. Interfaces get renamed and menus move; a guide that describes a menu that no longer exists is worse than no guide.
- Dates reflect editorial review, not deployment. The date on a guide changes when its content was actually checked or corrected, not because the site's code or styling changed.
Verify anything that matters
If a decision depends on it, check it against Google's own documentation rather than against this site. The guides link to the relevant Google Help pages precisely so that the primary source is one click away. Google can change how Takeout and Play order history behave at any time, and it does.
Why the app is designed to work locally
The export contains a record of what you have bought over the life of your account. Processing it on the device avoids the question of who else holds a copy: there is no account to create, no upload step, and no server-side copy to leak or subpoena. That is a design constraint, not a marketing line, and it is the reason the app asks for a file rather than for access to your Google account.
Contact
Questions, corrections and reports of an out-of-date step are all welcome at hello@apppurchasevault.com.