Vaulty

A transparent work-in-progress screen lock for macOS. Password to unlock. Your terminals stay visible and keep running behind it.

Docs: https://velofy.co/vaulty/

Vaulty is an overlay window, not a macOS system lock. It stores its password in plain text and is meant to stop casual interference, not a determined attacker. Read the limitations.

Install

Download Vaulty-x.y.z-macos.zip from Releases, unzip, drag Vaulty.app to Applications (or ~/Applications), then open it. Requires macOS 13 or later.

The build is not notarized (that needs a paid Apple Developer account), so on first launch macOS says "Apple could not verify Vaulty is free of malware". Click Done (never "Move to Bin"), then open System Settings > Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway, or clear the quarantine flag:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine ~/Applications/Vaulty.app

Grant Accessibility when prompted, so Vaulty can block Cmd+Tab and other shortcuts while locked. Details: Installation.

Build from source:

git clone https://github.com/velofy/vaulty.git
cd vaulty
make run       # build, install to ~/Applications, launch
make package   # zip for distribution: dist/Vaulty-VERSION-macos.zip

Use

Action	How
Lock	Cmd+Shift+L or menu bar ◐, Lock Screen
Unlock	Type the password, press Enter
Control Panel	Menu bar ◐, Control Panel...
Quit	Menu bar ◐, Quit Vaulty (disabled while locked)

The default password on first launch is anishisagentic. It is public, so change it in the Control Panel first.

Settings are stored at ~/Library/Application Support/com.anishfyi.vaulty/settings.json.

Features

• Transparent overlay on every display; the desktop stays live underneath
• Password unlock only, no Escape route
• Global shortcut Cmd+Shift+L
• Control Panel for password, lock message and dim opacity
• Menu bar app, local-only settings

Documentation

• Overview
• Installation
• First run and permissions
• Using Vaulty
• How the lock works
• Limitations and security notes
• Troubleshooting
• Changelog

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. The app is a single file, Sources/main.swift, built by the Makefile with swiftc.

Release

Push a v* tag. CI builds the macOS zip and attaches it to a GitHub Release.

git tag vX.Y.Z
git push origin vX.Y.Z

License

MIT. See LICENSE.