The Privacy panel has two controls that protect an open vault: auto-lock, which closes it after you step away, and screen-capture protection, which keeps other apps from recording the Myne window.
Auto-lock
After a period of inactivity, Myne locks your vault on its own and returns you to the Unlock screen, flushing your work first. You choose how long: 1, 5, 15, 30, or 60 minutes, and the default is 5.
There is deliberately no “Off”. Auto-lock is an always-on protection. You can make the timer longer, but you cannot disable it, because an unlocked vault left open indefinitely is exactly the exposure this guards against. Inactivity is measured at the machine level (your whole computer being idle), not just the Myne window; on some Linux desktop setups the detection is stricter and may lock sooner.
What auto-lock does is narrow the window in which an unattended, unlocked vault sits exposed. It does not close it entirely. If someone reaches your device while the vault is still open, the timer hasn’t fired yet; lock it yourself with the bottom-bar control when you walk away.
Getting back in after a re-lock
When auto-lock fires it returns you to the Unlock screen, where your master password always reopens the vault. If you have set up quick unlock, a PIN field or a Touch ID button appears above the password form so you can reverse the re-lock with a fast credential instead of retyping the full password. Quick unlock layers on top of the auto-lock-on-idle envelope; it does not change when the timer fires, only how quickly you get back in.
Two ceilings apply. Quick unlock allows five consecutive failed attempts; on the fifth, the stored credential is wiped and the vault falls back to the master password. And quick unlock is unavailable on a cold start — after you quit and reopen Myne, the first unlock of the session always takes the full master password, after which the PIN or Touch ID option returns. The full details, including how the credential is stored, live in the quick unlock article.
Screen-capture protection
Screen-capture protection asks your operating system to keep the Myne window out of screenshots and screen recordings. It is on by default and applies from the moment the window appears; you can toggle it in the Privacy panel.
Be clear about its reach:
- It works on macOS and on Windows 10 (the May 2020 Update, build 19041) and later. It is not available on Linux.
- It uses the operating system’s own content-protection feature, so it is only as strong as that feature, and it is not anti-malware. It stops a cooperating screen recorder from catching the window; it cannot stop software that has already compromised your machine from reading what’s on screen.
Limits
Both controls protect a vault that is unlocked and on screen. Neither protects the encrypted files at rest (your password does that) or a machine that is already compromised. Together they reduce the everyday ways an open vault leaks, such as a shoulder, a screen-share, or an unattended desk, but not every possible one.