Travel Mode

Travel Mode lets you temporarily hide sensitive vaults when crossing international borders or entering situations where your devices may be inspected. When activated, only vaults you have explicitly marked as "safe for travel" are accessible. All other vaults are completely hidden from your device.

Why Travel Mode Exists

At many international borders, customs and immigration officers have the legal authority to request that you unlock your devices and allow inspection of their contents. If your password manager shows all of your credentials -- including sensitive corporate logins, financial accounts, and personal data -- you may be compelled to reveal them.

Travel Mode reduces your exposure by ensuring that only a curated subset of your vaults is accessible during transit.

How It Works

Travel Mode operates through server-side vault filtering, not local deletion:

1. Normal state: All vaults are synced to your device and accessible.
2. Travel Mode ON: The server stops serving non-safe vaults in the sync response. Your local client clears cached data for hidden vaults. Only vaults marked "safe for travel" appear in the vault list, record list, and search results.
3. Travel Mode OFF: The server resumes serving all vaults. Your client syncs and restores full access.

Because hidden vaults are removed from the sync payload entirely, there is no trace of them on the device while Travel Mode is active. An inspector examining your device would see only the safe vaults with no indication that others exist.

warning

Travel Mode does not protect against forensic disk recovery tools that might find remnants of previously synced data. For maximum security, log out of SyVault entirely, clear the app cache, and log back in after enabling Travel Mode from a separate device. This ensures the device has never had the hidden vault data in its current session.

Setup

1. Mark Vaults as Safe for Travel

Before your trip:

1. Open the web vault or desktop app (do this from a device that will remain secure, if possible).
2. Go to Settings > Travel Mode.
3. You will see a list of all your vaults. Toggle Safe for Travel on for each vault you want accessible while traveling.
   • A good practice: create a dedicated "Travel" vault containing only the credentials you will need (hotel Wi-Fi, airline, ride-share, etc.).
   • Leave corporate, financial, and personal vaults unmarked.

2. Enable Travel Mode

When you are ready to travel:

1. Go to Settings > Travel Mode.
2. Click Enable Travel Mode.
3. Confirm the action. You will see a summary of which vaults will remain visible and which will be hidden.
4. SyVault immediately removes hidden vault data from all synced clients.

danger

Make sure you have access to a device where you can disable Travel Mode after your trip. If you enable Travel Mode and lose access to all your devices, you will need to log in to the web vault from a new device and disable it from there.

3. Disable Travel Mode

After you have cleared the border or returned from your trip:

1. Open Settings > Travel Mode.
2. Click Disable Travel Mode.
3. All vaults are restored and synced back to your devices.

Use Cases

• International travel: Hide corporate and financial vaults before going through customs.
• Device inspection: If your employer or school may inspect your device, hide personal vaults.
• Conferences and events: Temporarily reduce the attack surface on a device you are carrying in an unfamiliar environment.

Audit Log

Travel Mode activation and deactivation events are recorded in the audit log (for team and enterprise accounts). Admins can see when users enable or disable Travel Mode, which may be relevant for compliance.

Tips

• Test before you travel. Enable and disable Travel Mode at home to confirm which vaults appear and disappear.
• Keep your Travel vault lean. Only include credentials you will genuinely need during transit.
• Use a separate device to toggle. If possible, enable Travel Mode from a computer that stays home, so the traveling device starts its session with only safe vaults.