UnoLock Spaces
Overview
Spaces are separate work areas inside a Safe. Use them to keep personal records, business material, family planning, crypto notes, project data, or other sensitive information separated from unrelated Safe contents.
Spaces are more than folders. A Space carries its own access and sharing behavior, so it becomes the unit you use for organization, limited access, backups, sharing, and high-risk protection.
Space Types
Private Spaces
Private Spaces stay inside one Safe. They are the right default for personal notes, records, and files that do not need cross-Safe collaboration.
Use Private Spaces for:
- separating work from personal records,
- keeping legal, medical, financial, or estate material in distinct areas,
- creating a Space that only selected access keys inside the same Safe can open,
- backing up or restoring a specific Space.
Shared Spaces
Shared Spaces connect separate Safes to one collaboration workspace. Each participant keeps their own Safe, and only the shared Space is shared.
Use Shared Spaces for:
- family coordination across separate Safes,
- project work with another Safe,
- advisor or assistant workflows,
- sharing one collaboration area without granting access to the rest of a Safe.
Shared Space invites are managed from Space management, not from the normal message composer. See Shared Spaces.
Protected Spaces
Protected Spaces are Shared Spaces with an additional approval layer. A Protected Space requires coordination from the configured participant Safes before the protected content opens.
Use Protected Spaces for:
- data that no single Safe should be able to open alone,
- high-risk teams that need shared custody,
- sensitive records where compromise of one Safe must not expose the Space,
- situations where multiple trusted Safes need to approve access.
Protected Spaces are created as protected from the start. Existing Spaces are not converted into Protected Spaces. See Protected Spaces.
Access Keys vs Shared Spaces
These two models solve different problems:
- Access keys for one Safe let multiple passkeys, hardware keys, or agent keys open the same Safe. The Safe owner can grant those keys access to selected Spaces or full Safe administration.
- Shared Spaces between Safes let separate Safes work in one shared Space while keeping the rest of each Safe private.
Use access keys when people or devices need access to one Safe. Use Shared Spaces when each person keeps a separate Safe.
What Spaces Help You Do
- Organize data: group records and files by purpose instead of keeping everything in one large view.
- Limit access: give an access key access to only the Spaces it needs.
- Share precisely: collaborate on one Space without sharing the rest of a Safe.
- Protect sensitive data: use Protected Spaces when opening data requires more than one Safe.
- Back up selectively: back up supported Spaces individually instead of exporting an entire Safe.
- Use duress controls: mark sensitive Spaces for duress or wipe workflows where the tier supports those controls.
Security Model
- Space contents are encrypted by the client before they leave the device.
- UnoLock servers do not receive plaintext user data or plaintext user metadata.
- Sharing a Space does not share the rest of a Safe.
- Shared Space ownership controls deletion behavior: the owner can delete the Shared Space for all participants; a participant can remove only their own access.
- Protected Spaces add multi-Safe approval, reducing the risk that one compromised Safe exposes the protected content.
FAQs
Does sharing a Space share my whole Safe?
No. A Shared Space exposes only that collaboration Space.
Can I turn a normal Space into a Protected Space later?
No. Create the Space as protected from the start.
Can I back up a Protected Space?
No. Protected Spaces do not support Space backups.
Are access keys and Shared Spaces the same thing?
No. Access keys apply to one Safe. Shared Spaces connect separate Safes to one collaboration area.
