No vaults. Just folders.
JEP — Just Enough Privacy — locks ordinary folders in place. Filenames scrambled, headers obscured, folder hidden from Finder and Spotlight. Unlock with Touch ID or PIN. Auto-relocks when you're done.
For personal journals, project drafts, financial records, or private collections — anything you'd rather a curious eye not land on in a casual Finder window.
Folders, not vaults.
Most privacy tools force you into a container — a disk image, a vault file, a folder-shaped impostor that you have to copy your data into. JEP doesn't. Your folders stay where they are, named what they're named, on the volume they live on.
A new abstraction to live inside.
You create a vault. You move your files into it. You learn its rules. You hope your other apps remember the new path. When the vault grows, copying takes minutes.
- copy files into a container
- open container before use
- large vaults = slow operations
- broken paths in other apps
The folder you already have.
Pick a folder. Lock it. JEP renames its contents and applies a tiny in-place byte mutation. Same volume, same path, no copying. Locking a 50 GB folder takes about as long as renaming it — because that's mostly what it is.
- operates on real folders, in place
- no container, no migration
- same-volume rename + in-place mutation
- instant regardless of folder size
Three things change when you lock.
Names. Headers. Visibility. That's it. Step through the demo to see what happens to a folder, in order. Files have not moved. They are still on disk at their original path.
Unlock briefly. Relock automatically.
Every unlock is session-bound. You pick a window, JEP starts a timer, and when it expires the folder relocks itself. A background watchdog catches expired sessions even if the app isn't running.
Touch ID, Windows Hello, or PIN.
Biometric is a convenience layer on top of a 4–6 digit PIN. The PIN is the primary auth and the cipher seed; biometric just gates the UI. PIN field is always visible alongside.
- session presets: 15 min · 1 hour · 2 hours · until sleep
- default: 2 hours
- per-folder — unlocking one doesn't unlock others
Three things trigger a relock.
You don't need to remember to put it away. JEP relocks on timer expiry, on system sleep, and on app quit. A scheduled background task (launchd / Task Scheduler) checks every 5 minutes for stale sessions if the app isn't running.
- timer expiry → folder relocks
- system sleep → folder relocks
- app quit → folder relocks
- watchdog backstops crashes & force-quits
Built for real-world filesystems.
A privacy tool that breaks the moment you rename a folder, plug in a NAS, or have a few thousand files isn't a privacy tool. JEP handles the boring parts.
Cross-platform, one model
Same Rust engine on macOS and Windows. Same UX. Touch ID on Mac, Windows Hello on Windows.
NAS & network drives
Works on SMB and NFS shares. Slower than local SSD — but it works.
Survives renames
Folders are tracked by inode (macOS) or FileIndex (Windows), not by path. Rename while unlocked — JEP doesn't lose track.
Bulk Lock All / Unlock All
One click in the menu bar or tray. Useful when you have several folders and you're stepping away from the machine.
Concealment levels
Pick how much of each file gets scrambled. Fast (8 B headers), Standard (4 KB), or Thorough (64 KB). Default is Standard.
Auto-heal on startup
If JEP crashed mid-lock, it figures out where it stopped from the filenames themselves and finishes the job silently. No manual recovery.
Recovery sidecar
A small .jep-recovery file inside each locked folder. If the app database is lost, the folder is still recoverable.
Honest partial-failure
If an open file blocks a lock, JEP says so — by name. No silent successes. No "everything's fine" lies.
No network. Ever.
JEP doesn't phone home. No telemetry, no analytics, no license servers checking in. Buy once, run forever.
Your data is never permanently inaccessible.
Privacy products live or die on whether you trust them with your files. JEP's answer is unusually direct, and a little embarrassing for the rest of the category.
The PIN is stored in plain text in the local database. Forgot it? Open manifest.db with any SQLite browser and read it back. We do not have a "forgot your PIN" support flow because we do not need one.
Every locked folder writes a small .jep-recovery sidecar inside it. If the JEP database is lost, deleted, or corrupted, the folder is still recoverable from its own contents.
Filesystem residue from interrupted operations is repaired silently on next launch. The transaction log lives in the filenames themselves — JEP can tell what state a folder is in by looking at the suffixes.
Files are obfuscated, not encrypted. The cipher is intentionally simple. We chose reversibility over cryptographic strength because for this use case, recovery matters more than resistance to a determined attacker.
JEP is privacy from casual local access.
It is not a forensic tool, an anti-malware product, or a defense against anyone with administrator access and a few hours. We say this in plain text on the marketing site because we'd rather lose the sale than mis-sell the product.
Privacy from someone using your machine.
- family members opening your laptop
- roommates, coworkers, casual visitors
- previews and thumbnails in Finder / Explorer
- Spotlight / Windows Search results
- quick-glance discovery through filenames
Anything involving real adversaries.
- forensic disk analysis
- malware with read access to your home directory
- someone with administrator access and time
- law enforcement, employers, IT admins
- cloud-synced copies outside JEP's reach
One price. One purchase. Forever.
No subscription. No upgrade pricing. Buy the platform you use. Full pricing details →
$29.99 one-time
- Unlimited folders, unlimited files
- Touch ID convenience unlock
- All three concealment levels
- Background relock watchdog (launchd)
- Free updates within v1.x
$19.99 one-time
- Unlimited folders, unlimited files
- Windows Hello convenience unlock
- All three concealment levels
- Background relock watchdog (Task Scheduler)
- Free updates within v1.x
Free tier: lock one folder, up to 20 files.
Enough to lock a journal, a small project, or a private collection. Same engine, same UX. When you outgrow it, paste your license key into Settings.
Three steps from checkout to running.
Gumroad handles the transaction. The license is a single string you paste into JEP. There's no account to create, no portal to log into.
Checkout on Gumroad
You hit Buy, get redirected to Gumroad, enter your card details, and complete the order. We never see your payment info.
amount: $29.99
total: $29.99
License arrives by email
Gumroad sends a receipt with your license key — a single string of characters. It's tied to the email you used at checkout, not to a particular machine.
From: noreply@gumroad.com
License: JEP-MAC-A3F4-9B2D-7E81-CC04
Paste into JEP
Open JEP. Settings → License. Paste the key. The free-tier limit is removed and your install is registered. That's it. No further activation, no online check.
status: activated
tier: full · macos
Things people ask before they buy.
If your question isn't here, email help@justenoughprivacy.com and we'll add it.
No. It's reversible obfuscation. We XOR file headers with a key derived from your PIN, and rename files and folders with a deterministic cipher. We chose this over real encryption because it's instant on huge folders and because reversibility matters more than cryptographic strength for this product. Don't use JEP to defend against malware or forensic analysis.
Open ~/Library/Application Support/JEP/manifest.db with any SQLite browser. Run SELECT value FROM settings WHERE key='pin';. The PIN is stored in plain text — that is intentional. The threat model assumes nobody who can find that file would also struggle to read it.
Auto-heal repairs the residue on next launch. The transaction log lives in the filenames themselves (suffix conventions), so JEP can tell exactly which step it was in when it stopped. Your files are never destroyed, never partially mangled in a way the app can't recover from.
Yes. SMB and NFS shares both work. External drives work. Network operations are slower than local SSD, so locking a large folder over the network takes longer — but the mechanism is the same.
No. And it's not designed to. JEP is privacy from casual local access — a family member, a roommate, a coworker. It will not stop a determined adversary with administrator access, forensic tools, or time. We say this on the front page because mis-selling this product would be worse than not selling it.
One-time. $29.99 for macOS. $19.99 for Windows. Forever. Bug-fix and feature updates within v1.x are free. If we ship a v2 in two years and you want to upgrade, you can — you won't be forced to.
Nowhere, with one specific exception. The lock and unlock path makes no network connections. No telemetry, no analytics, no crash reporter. The only time JEP talks to a server is the first time you paste a license key — it makes one call to validate the key, gets back a signed activation token, and never connects again. Locked files are still on your machine, at their original path, on their original volume. See our privacy policy for the full picture.
Yes. Within 14 days, no questions asked. Email help@justenoughprivacy.com. Refunds are processed by Gumroad.