Select Set Password in the Collection menu to protect the active collection with a password, or to change the password. If you do not enter a password then any previous password is removed.
There is no toolbar button for the Set Password command. If you’ve hidden the main menu, you can access the command by right-clicking on a collection’s tab.
Be careful when password-protecting collections. AceText encrypts collections with the “blowfish” algorithm, designed by world-famous cryptographer Bruce Schneier. This encryption cannot be broken except by guessing the password. If you forget your password then the clips in the collection will be irretrievably lost. To make sure you don’t mistype your password, the Set Password dialog asks you to enter your password twice. If you’re sure that nobody is looking over your shoulder, then you can untick the Mask Password checkbox. Then you need to enter the password only once. Inspect your password closely to make sure it is correct.
To make it infeasible to guess the password by using a computer program to try every password that you might have used, AceText uses the PBKDF2 algorithm with a very large number of rounds to derive the encryption key from your password. AceText uses a different random salt for each collection to ensure that each collection has a different encryption key even if you set the same password for them. It may take a second or so, depending on your computer’s performance, for your new password to be applied to your collection. The algorithm is deliberately designed to be slow and CPU-intensive so that a program running on a powerful PC could perhaps try tens of passwords per second instead of billions per second.
If you want to use the same password for multiple collections, you can tick “also encrypt all open collections that do not have a password” and/or “replace the password of all unlocked collections with this password”. AceText can use multiple CPU cores to derive the encryption keys for multiple collections at the same time. Using the same password for multiple collections is safe as long as you don’t share the password with others and you don’t use the same password with other applications or websites.
If you tick “lock the collections immediately” then setting the password also locks the collection. If you don’t then the Set Password command does not have any obvious immediate effect. But when you close and reopen the collection then the collection will be locked. AceText does immediately derive the encryption key even if you don’t lock the collection immediately. AceText does not keep your password in memory.
When a collection is locked, its tab is yellow and the collection appears empty. The AceText Editor displays a box where you can enter the password to unlock the collection. Unlocking a collection does not remove the password. If you close and re-open the collection, you’ll be prompted for the password again.
If you try to add a secret clip to a collection that does not yet have a password, then AceText automatically pops up the Set Password dialog. If you cancel the dialog then the secret clip is not added to the collection. The options to use the same password for other collections and to immediately lock the collection are not available in this situation. This way AceText can immediately add the secret clip to the collection after you set the password.
After setting a password or unlocking a collection with its password, you can use the Lock Collection command to lock the collection at any time. In the Files Preferences you can enable various options to automatically lock collections in certain situations. Use these options to make sure you don’t accidentally leave sensitive collections unlocked.
You can put a password on the ClipHistory if you want to. If you do so then the ClipHistory will be non-functional each time you start AceText, until you unlock the ClipHistory by entering its password.
You can also put a password on the Recycle Bin. If you do then you will not be able to delete any clips until the recycle bin is unlocked. clips deleted from password-protected collections are saved in the recycle bin. Deleting a secret clip only adds it to the recycle bin if it has a password. If you work with password-protected collections then you should either put a password on the Recycle Bin too or turn on the option to purge the Recycle Bin when closing AceText in the Files Preferences.