Write your personal or shared Key, or the recipient's or signer's Lock in box 1. To display the characters, check Show. As you type your Key, a text below will tell you the strength of the Key based on simple rules. Make sure to use $ymbol$, numb3rs, caPiTals, unusual words and mispelingss. Initial capitals and trailing numbers are not helpful and will be ignored for the strength score. It is strongly encouraged to append your email to the Key. The strength meter won't show a Perfect score otherwise.

You will need to enter a Key to unlock or sign messages. To send a short locked message, leave this box empty.

To display the Lock matching a Key, place the Key in box 1, click the Make Lock button. The Lock will appear in box 2. You can then email it by clicking Email.

To make a shared Key from your personal Key and someone's Lock, place your Key in box 1 and the Lock in box 2, then click Make Lock. The shared key will appear in box 1.

To put a random Key in box 1 and its corresponding Lock in box 2, click Make Lock with box 1 empty.

To split a Key into several parts, which can be rejoined later, click Split/Join with box 2 empty. A popup will ask for number of parts needed to reconstruct the original Key. The parts, one per line, will appear in box 2. Extra parts can be made by clicking Split/Join again. To join several parts, place them in separate lines in box 2, then click Split/Join. The reconstructed Key will appear in box 1.

This is where you write the text to be locked, signed or unlocked. Locks matching the Key in box 1 also appear here. The process to make Locks and shared Keys is described above.

To lock a text, enter it into box 2 below. Write a shared Key or the recipient's Lock in box 1, depending on the type of locking you want. Then click the Lock/Unlock button. The locked text will appear in box 2, replacing the original text. You can then email it or text it using the buttons above box 2.

If box 1 is empty when you click Lock/Unlock, a prompt will ask for a Short Message Key (message length limited to 57 ASCII characters, non-ASCII characters use 6 spaces each, so avoid using accents, umlauts, etc.).

To unlock a locked text, place your personal or shared Key in box 1, with the locked text in box 2, then click Lock/Unlock. If you have the wrong item in box 1, a popup will tell you.

To sign a text with your personal Key, first make sure your Key is in box 1 above, then enter into box 2 below the text to be signed and click Sign/Verify. The signature will be appended to the text. This can also be emailed with the Email button.

To verify a signed text, place the text carrying the signature at the end in box 2 below, and the signer's Lock in box 1 above, then click Sign/Verify. A popup will say whether or not the signature is verified for this text and this signer.

The Email button places the contents of box 2 in a formatted email, using the default client. The SMS App button opens your default messaging app; you need to copy the message into the clipboard before clicking the button. The ID button replaces the content of box 2 with its SHA256 hash. This is useful for authentication purposes.

Clicking the Stealth button reveals several buttons and checkboxes (click again to hide). This is what they do:

The Words button converts the contents of box 2 into fake text, and back. It replaces each character with a word drawn from the current cover text. The recipient must have the same cover text but no Key or password is needed to retrieve the message, so please lock the message first with a Key or a Lock.

For better stealth, the Spaces button hides the contents of box 2 in the cover text, by encoding each character into the spaces between words, and back. Seven words are needed for each character. No Key, password, or matching cover text is needed to retrieve the message, so please lock the message first with a Key or a Lock.

To display the current cover text, click Cover Text with box 2 empty. To change the cover text, place the new text in box 2 and click Cover Text.

The No tags checkbox controls whether or not tags and explanatory text are added to items generated by PassLok. Check it for better stealth.

When Decoy mode is checked you can include a second, hidden text locked by a separate Password. Popups will ask first for the Password for this text, and then for the text itself. The locked text in box 2 contains both texts. You can also use this mode when making a signature. The hidden text is limited to 152 ASCII characters for Key-locked text, 87 characters for text locked with the recipient's Lock, 38 characters for short message mode, 40 characters in signatures. Non-ASCII characters use 6 spaces each, so avoid using accents, umlauts, etc.

When you unlock a text or verify a sign with Decoy mode checked, a popup will ask for the special Password. The hidden text will appear in a second popup.