With the releases of iOS 16 and macOS Ventura in 2022, Apple debuted its Lockdown Mode for folks at specific threat of being focused by mercenary spy ware. The function is actually a set of configurations for iOS and macOS that restrict or block niceties like hyperlink previews in Messages and shared albums in Photographs. Lockdown Mode additionally restricts your machine’s capability to just accept unsolicited communications like FaceTime calls from cellphone numbers and accounts you’ve got by no means known as earlier than. And this 12 months, in iOS 17, Apple added extra enhancements, that means extra safety-focused limitations. The corporate has persistently emphasised that Lockdown Mode just isn’t meant for mainstream use by most individuals—however in every week of testing, it is surprisingly tolerable.
Turning on Lockdown Mode merely entails confirming the setting change together with your machine PIN or a biometric authentication in “Privateness & Safety” after which rebooting so the system can apply all of the restrictions and limitations. Enabling Lockdown Mode is just like altering the language of your machine—the system must comprehensively undertake the brand new configuration and apply it in every single place. As soon as the reboot is full, your machine comes again on trying just about like regular.
When malware builders goal Apple units, they tailor their assaults to use weaknesses within the complicated options of iOS and macOS that facilitate communication and knowledge sharing and deal with completely different file varieties and data codecs. So Lockdown Mode goals to make it a lot more durable for business spy ware distributors or different motivated and well-resourced actors to develop exploit chains that mix vulnerabilities in a number of iOS or macOS options to take management of units. In apply, which means that it is more durable and fewer enjoyable to casually share—and particularly obtain—hyperlinks, GIFs, and built-in components in instruments like Messages. And companies like HomeKit are curtailed as effectively.
For instance, you possibly can nonetheless use Apple Pay with Lockdown Mode, however its integrations with different apps are a lot much less fluid. If somebody sends you a fee by means of Apple Money, you possibly can obtain it, however you may solely get a really normal, unspecific message in Messages that one thing has occurred— you will not know that somebody despatched you cash on Apple Money. Hyperlinks do not increase if you ship and obtain them, and when you ship or obtain a hyperlink to a picture or different file, it’ll ship as text-only—a gnarly, full URL with no preview and no hyperlink that might allow you to robotically open it in a browser.
As a part of Apple’s most up-to-date updates for Lockdown Mode in June, the corporate added assist for Apple Watch and commenced robotically eradicating geolocation knowledge from images if you share them. The enhancements additionally embrace a transfer to dam units by default from becoming a member of unsecured Wi-Fi networks and 2G mobile networks—a change meant to guard in opposition to malicious Wi-Fi networks and the cellular knowledge surveillance device generally known as stingrays.
This set of updates enabled “safer wi-fi connectivity defaults, media dealing with, media sharing defaults, sandboxing, and community safety optimizations,” Apple mentioned in a press release on the time. “Turning on Lockdown Mode additional hardens machine defenses and strictly limits sure functionalities, sharply decreasing the assault floor for individuals who want extra protections.”