How to Hide Sensitive Widget Data When Device Is Locked?

With the introduction of widgets in iOS, users can now easily access information from their favorite apps right at the lock screen and Today View. As good as it might seem, this does introduce privacy issues whereby sensitive data can become accessible even though the device is locked.

To address this issue, we can take the following approaches:

1. Partial privacy redactions
2. Full privacy redactions

In this article, we will go through each of these approaches. So let’s get right into it!

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Partial Privacy Redactions

As the name implies, Partial Privacy Redactions will only redact some of the UI elements in the widgets. Let’s say we have a Bitcoin wallet widget that shows the user’s current Bitcoin balance.

var body: some View {
    
    VStack(alignment: .leading) {

        Text("Bitcoin Balance")
            .font(.title2)
            .fontWeight(.bold)
            .foregroundColor(.orange)
        
        // Show Bitcoin balance
        Text("0.25₿")
            .font(.headline)
            .fontWeight(.semibold)
            .foregroundColor(.gray)
    }
    .containerBackground(for: .widget) { }
}

As a developer, it is our responsibility to protect the privacy of our users, thus it makes sense for us to redact the balance value when the device is locked. To achieve that, we can use the .privacySensitive() modifier introduced in iOS 15.

Note:

Partial privacy redactions only work on real devices, so make sure not to test them using the simulator.

If you are using a device running on iOS 16, be sure to go to “Settings” → “Face ID & Passcode” and turn off the “Lock Screen Widgets” toggle in the “Allow Access When Locked” section. Or else, the .privacySensitive() modifier will not have any effect.

That’s it for partial privacy redactions. Pretty simple isn’t it? 🤩

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Full Privacy Redactions

Another way to hide sensitive data on widgets is by leveraging complete data protection. When complete data protection is enabled, WidgetKit will automatically replace your widget’s timeline content with the placeholder content as long as the device is locked.

To enable complete data protection for a widget, we need to first activate the data protection capability in the Apple Developer Portal.

1. Go to the identifiers page
2. Add or select the identifier that represents your widget
3. Enable the “Data Protection” capability and save
4. Navigate to the profiles page
5. Create or select the corresponding provisioning profile
6. Download the profile & double-click to add it to Xcode

Once done, head over to Xcode and assign the provisioning profile we just downloaded to your widget target.

After that, add the “Data Protection” capability to your widget target.

An entitlement file will be created after adding the capability, open it and make sure the data protection level is set to NSFileProtectionComplete.

With that, all data in your widgets will be redacted when the device is locked. Here’s a screenshot of our Bitcoin wallet widget in full privacy redactions mode.

Notice that for full privacy redactions, the .privacySensitive() modifier is not required.

Note:

Full privacy redactions only work on real devices, so make sure not to test them using the simulator.

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Now that you have a clear understanding of how to hide sensitive data on widgets, be sure to take your user’s privacy into consideration when creating widgets.

I hope you enjoy reading this article, if you do, feel free to follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn. You can also subscribe to my newsletter so that you won’t miss out on any of my upcoming iOS development-related articles.

Thanks for reading. 👨🏻‍💻

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