Discreet Mode

Overview

Onset Engine already keeps your library local — analysis, matching and rendering all happen on your machine. Discreet Mode addresses a different problem: what’s visible on your screen while you work.

It’s a presentation layer. It does not encrypt anything, and it’s important to understand exactly what it does and doesn’t protect — see Scope.

Turning it on

The 🕶 button in the header toggles it. When active:

• Thumbnails are blurred everywhere they appear — asset bin, Subjects panel, review queues
• The window title becomes “Editor”
• Running previews are closed — any open ffplay windows are terminated

Toggle it off and thumbnails return to normal immediately.

The setting persists between sessions via privacy.discreet_default in config.yaml, so if you close the app with it on, it starts that way.

The panic key

Ctrl+Shift+H, from anywhere in the app:

1. Enables Discreet Mode if it isn’t already on
2. Closes all preview windows
3. Minimises the application

Startup PIN

Right-click the 🕶 button to set, change, or remove a PIN.

With a PIN set, launching Onset Engine presents a lock screen before the main window appears. Closing that screen exits the application — there’s no bypass.

To change or remove it you must enter the current PIN. Leaving the new PIN blank removes it.

The PIN is stored as a SHA-256 hash in config.yaml under privacy.pin_hash. The plaintext is never written to disk.

Scope

Being precise about this, because the distinction matters:

What it protects against: someone seeing your screen. Screen sharing, streaming, a colleague walking past, a casual glance at a shared machine.

What it does not protect against: anyone with access to the files themselves. library.db, your thumbnail cache, your clips and rendered output are all unchanged on disk. The blur is applied to images in memory as they’re displayed; the cached thumbnails behind them are ordinary unencrypted files.

The PIN is a soft gate that stops the application opening. It is not disk encryption and doesn’t pretend to be — anyone who can browse the filesystem can browse your library regardless.

If you need protection at the file level, use full-disk or container encryption underneath Onset Engine. Discreet Mode is complementary to that, not a substitute for it.

Configuration

privacy:
  discreet_default: false   # start with Discreet Mode enabled
  pin_hash: ''              # SHA-256 of the startup PIN; empty = no PIN

Both are managed through the GUI; you shouldn’t need to edit them by hand.

Notes

• Blurring is display-only, so toggling it is instant — no re-processing.
• The thumbnail cache on disk is never blurred, which is what makes toggling cheap.
• If you forget your PIN, clear privacy.pin_hash in config.yaml to remove the lock.