People seem to valueprivacymore than ever these days, and with such a massive part of our lives taking place in digital conversations, isn’t it about time we do more to protect them?
Not all apps incorporate native conversation-centric privacy features, but with the help of a newly releasedjailbreak tweakcalledChatLockby iOS developerElias Sfeir, you can lock individual conversations in several of your favorite messaging apps with just a few taps to prevent friends and family from logging into your device and reading your personal chats.
As depicted in the screenshot examples above, ChatLock works by integrating a ‘Lock’ function into several popular chat apps, includingiMessageand SMS in Apple’s native Messages app, direct messages in theTwitterapp, messages in theWhatsAppMessenger app, and direct message in theInstagramapp. Depending on the app and its interface, the Lock feature may appear as a swipe-to-access button or as a tap-to-access prompt.
After you lock a conversation, you won’t be able to read the contents until you authenticate yourself with a password or with biometrics (Face IDandTouch IDare both supported). The password works great as a backup when you find yourself in a situation where biometrics are inconvenient. Here’s a quick video demo compliments of the developer:
Upon downloading ChatLock, you’ll find a dedicated preference pane in the Settings app where you can configure it to your liking:
Here, you can:
Options that you can configure for each app include:
The developer provides a Respring button at the bottom of the secondary preference panes so that you may save any changes you make on demand.
We particularly like the fact that you can forcibly capture a front-facing picture on a failed authentication attempt because this means you can find out who might be trying to read your conversations. If you have a friend, family member, or spouse who knows yourpasscode, this can be a common occurrence. Fortunately, now you can be aware of your surroundings even when you aren’t around your device.
If you’re interested in protecting your conversation privacy even further, then you canpurchase ChatLock for $1.50 from the Packix repositoryin your preferred package manager. The tweak supportsjailbrokeniOS 11, 12, and 13 devices.
Do you care enough about your conversation privacy to lock individual conversations? Let us know in the comments section.
