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FAQ
No. There is no recovery key and no backdoor, by design. Save the password in your password manager when you create the vault.
Yes: Settings → the vault → Change Password…, while it is locked. VaultBar uses diskutil image chpass and then checks that the new password opens it. It re-wraps the key without re-encrypting the data, so older copies of the image (backups, snapshots) still open with the old password. If the old password leaked, create a new vault and copy the files over instead.
No. See Security model.
No. It makes no network connections.
Notarization needs a paid Apple Developer account. The app is open source and releases are self-signed with a stable identity, so permissions survive updates (not notarized, so first launch still needs Open Anyway); see Installation → First launch.
Better not. An encrypted sparse bundle is many band files; sync tools upload them as they change, and two-way sync can corrupt the image. New Vault… warns about iCloud Drive, Desktop & Documents, ~/Library/CloudStorage, Syncthing and Synology Drive folders. Keep the vault in a local folder such as ~/Vaults and back it up while it is locked.
Indexing can write search data about your files onto the volume while it is mounted and keeps it busy. Once per new vault run:
sudo mdutil -i off "/Volumes/<volume name>"VaultBar shows this command with a Copy button after creating a vault.
Yes. Idle only counts keyboard and mouse, so an unattended job working inside a vault would be locked after the idle time. Use Pause auto-lock for 1 hour from the menu. Sleep still locks, and the icon shows a warning badge until the pause ends, you press Resume, or VaultBar quits.
Give the job a private mount (a path that never changes, e.g. ~/Vaults/mnt/Work, instead of /Volumes/Work 1) and, if it only reads, unlock read-only. vaultbar path Work prints the path for scripts. The job can't unlock the vault itself: the command line never takes a password. Also see Where plaintext can leak for what AI apps keep.
The icon turns amber for any vault in your list, however it was mounted (VaultBar, Finder, Terminal), and auto-lock applies to it. Encrypted images that are not in your list are ignored.
If a vault is unlocked, VaultBar asks: Lock All & Quit, Quit or Cancel, because auto-lock stops while it is closed. A deliberate Quit is not undone by the login item; a crash is.
It should: the popup takes the keyboard however it was opened (click, menu or vaultbar://unlock). If it doesn't, please open an issue.
No. Removing a vault in Settings only removes it from the list. VaultBar never deletes an image file.
Yes: the vaultbar://unlock|lock|toggle|open/<name> (and lockall) URL scheme, the vaultbar command line, and optional Raycast Script Commands (Unlock, Lock and Open per vault). See Usage.
Yes. Turn on Open in Finder after unlocking in Settings, or use Open in Finder / Unlock & Open… in the menu, vaultbar://open/<name> or the Raycast Open script, which always open it.
When the login item is on, a copy you start yourself hands over to the copy macOS supervises (the one that restarts after a crash) when it is idle (no prompt, window or menu open, nothing locking or unlocking, auto-lock not paused); it checks 2 s after launch and then every 30 s. A link that started it is handled first. The old copy quits only after the new one has confirmed it is running, so VaultBar never stops; the icon just blinks while the new copy puts up its own.
