WinLock 1.0

Overview

From ancient times, man wanted to keep his browsing (and all other not work-related) activities hidden from his boss. This lead to the need of something which would maximize the procrastination and minimize the worry about the boss barging in the office and seeing the man not working. So, among other solutions, WinLock is a tool that can help with this task quite efficiently. It can quickly and easily hide active windows with the press of a hotkey combination, making them invisible to anyone, unless the user unhides them by pressing the same secret hotkey combination. It’s a pretty neat app, but is it trustworthy?

Installation

WinLock’s installation procedure is amazingly short, and has absolutely no difficult settings throughout the steps, apart from the common settings ones (installation directory, shortcuts, etc.). The main installation process is fast as well, finishing in only a few seconds.

This application has no viruses, trojans or other kinds of malware included, and it’s also 100% clean from 3^rd party advertised software.

Supported operating systems are Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8.

Interface

Once the program has been installed, it will run automatically (if you didn’t uncheck the “Run WinLock” option before closing the installer) and ask you for a password in order to lock and unlock windows. The default password for first-time users is “123” but it is recommended that you change so as to avoid any unwanted users from locking/unlocking windows.

That’s actually the main interface of the program; there’s really nothing more to it other than the startup window that asks you for a password, which can also be minimized to the system tray once the password has been entered by clicking on the “Hide WinLock to Taskbar Tray” button.

Pros

So, once you have entered the password, you can start having fun locking and unlocking windows- which is a piece of cake, basically.

All you have to do is bring to front any window that you want to hide, and simply press Ctrl + Space. This will hide the window, and instead create a new icon in the system tray which is basically the window you just hid.

In order to unlock that window, you’d have to double-click on that icon and enter the program’s password. The window will then unhide, and you can continue your activity from where you left off.

In a more technical analysis, what the program does when Ctrl + Space hotkey combination is pressed is call the ShowWindow(hWnd, SW_HIDE) Windows function in order to hide the currently active window. Then, in order to unlock it, WinLock calls ShowWindow(hWnd, SW_SHOW) function.

That’s all there is to its functionality basically.

Cons

It would be good if the user had the option to change the default hotkey combination.

Alternatives

Other programs with similar functionality are: Boss Key (freemium), Magic Boss Key (free), Elongsoft Hide Windows Hotkey (free), Windows Hide Tool (free), Quick Window Hiding Tool (free) and ZigZag Cleaner (free).

Conclusion

WinLock is a small, easy to use program that will definitely save you in several crucial times.