Experiencing Apple's Lockdown Mode -- The Challenges of Providing Technology for At-Risk Users

Abstract

Lockdown Mode, introduced in 2022 as an optional security hardening setting for Apple's operating systems, aims to protect users from "some of the most sophisticated digital threats". We present the first academic analysis of Lockdown Mode based on a three-month autoethnographic study of its everyday use. Our findings show that Lockdown Mode does not adhere to most principles proposed by Matthews et al. (2025) for technologies supporting prevention and monitoring of digital threats for at-risk users. Apple provides limited information about the underlying threat model and affected functionality, making it difficult for at-risk users to understand and evaluate the tool. Usability challenges further highlight the need for more granular controls, while the high volume of notifications offers little support for attack detection and instead contributes to user annoyance. Although we consider Lockdown Mode an important step toward improving security, we believe Apple should integrate principles for technology used by at-risk users more fully.

16 pages, 6 figures, v2: Accepted manuscript published in Journal of Cybersecurity. Substantially revised and retitled; previously titled "I Blame Apple in Part for My False Expectations: An Autoethnographic Study of Apple's Lockdown Mode in iOS"