Your Mac knows you. And remembers everyone else.

Haven Desktop holds the whole machine closed unless you are in front of it, then hands you control of the things that matter most — file by file, folder by folder, application by application. Everything it refuses is written to an activity record on your own machine, with a photograph of whoever was there.

Your files open while you are sitting at the machine and close again when you are not. No password to type, no password to leak. Owner authentication, doing exactly what it says.

Protection is not enough on its own

Technology is challenging security faster than security is answering back. AI has made biometric attacks cheap — deepfakes, video replay, synthetic faces. Credentials were already the weakest link and are weaker now. And none of that touches the ordinary causes: human error, misplaced trust, data handled carelessly, breaches somewhere you have never heard of.

Every system can be tested. What matters is whether it tells you when it was. Haven Desktop writes each decision it makes — every open, every refusal, every tamper — into an activity record kept on your own machine, and records each refusal with a photograph of who was in front of the camera. Haven Vault goes a step further: its record is hash-chained, each entry sealed against the one before it, so an entry cannot be altered or removed without breaking the chain that follows. That is coming to Haven Desktop.

Being precise about the boundary, because you should hold us to it: Haven Desktop is presence-based access control, not anti-spoofing. A photograph of the enrolled person can sometimes satisfy recognition. Haven asks for a movement response before it opens, which a still image cannot answer — a deterrent, not a defence against someone with your machine and a good picture of you. That is precisely why the evidence log exists: the question is not only whether something can be attempted, but whether you find out.

Also on the App Store

Haven Vault is the smaller half

Haven Vault comes from the Mac App Store on a subscription — $4.99 a month, 3 days free — and it is deliberately simple: an encrypted vault that opens while your face is present and seals when you step away. If that is all you need, take it. It is also on iPhone and iPad, free to download, for private photos you can share and take back.

It is smaller than Haven Desktop for one reason. Every app on the App Store runs inside Apple’s sandbox, which means it cannot reach outside its own container. So Haven Vault can protect what you put into it, and no more — it cannot lock the folders where your files already live, it cannot close the whole screen when you leave, and it cannot stop an application until you return.

Haven Desktop does all three, and it can only be distributed here. Not a commercial decision: the App Store sandbox does not permit it, so the full product is downloaded directly from this page, signed and notarised by Apple.

The two do not share data. Enrolling in one does not enrol you in the other.

What’s new

Haven Desktop 0.19.13 · 2 October 2026

• Organise your Vault. Rename files, create folders, and switch between list and thumbnail view.
• Drag and drop inside the Vault. Drag to reorder, drop files onto a folder to move them in, or drop files from Finder straight into the folder you want.
• Photo previews only while it is you. In thumbnail view, previews of your photos appear only while Haven recognises you, and disappear the moment the Vault locks.

Haven Desktop 0.19.9 · 23 September 2026

• Haven never locks you out because its own camera is slow. A cover appears only when the camera is proven live and has real evidence. A camera that is starting or stalled is handled quietly, with Touch ID as the bridge.
• Silent checking. Protected applications open without interruption while you are recognised. The camera watches quietly in the background; only a real absence or a different person changes anything.
• Touch ID when your Mac wakes after a long sleep.
• History in plain words. Every entry says what happened, what Haven did, and what it means for you. Download it as a report with photographs or as a spreadsheet.

Already installed? Haven Desktop updates itself.

Questions people ask

I covered the camera and my Mac stayed open. Why?

Because you kept using it. Haven treats keyboard or mouse activity as presence: if the mouse or keyboard has been in continued use since you were last verified, Haven assumes the person at the keys is still you. The camera cannot always find a face — a head bent over a keyboard, a bright window behind you — and covering your screen every time you look down is not protection, it is noise.

The assumption is bounded. It lasts at most two minutes from your last verification, and only fifteen seconds if the camera is covered or dark. Input never opens anything new on its own, and it never overrides a face that does not match: a different person in view is refused at once. Every time Haven relies on this, History records it as “kept open · mouse or keyboard in continued use since you were last verified”, and the header reads Mac in use · camera sees no face.

What that means for you: someone who sits down within seconds of you leaving and keeps typing, without showing their face, has at most two minutes. Lock your Mac when you walk away; Haven is a second line, not a substitute for the first.

Why does History say “nobody in view” while I am sitting here?

The camera did not find a face in the last frames — usually looking down, turning away, or strong light behind you. Haven now re-examines a frame with the contrast corrected before deciding, and never concludes anything from a camera that is not proven live.

Can Haven protect folders in iCloud Drive?

Not yet. iCloud restores a folder’s permissions within seconds, so Haven says so honestly rather than pretending. Move the folder out of iCloud Drive (anywhere outside Desktop and Documents) and it can be protected. System-level protection for iCloud files is in development and needs Apple’s approval.

Privacy, concretely

• Your face is enrolled, encrypted and stored locally on your machine. It is never uploaded.
• Haven Desktop does not create an account and does not require one. It does create a private, device-bound identifier so a trial can run — exactly what that sends.
• Camera frames are processed in memory and discarded. The only images written to disk are the evidence photographs taken when access is refused — stored locally on your machine, and visible to you in your evidence log.
• To start a trial we ask for your email address, and nothing else. We do not share customer data.

Full privacy policy