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Lockdown: Anti-tracking app for iPhone, iPad and Mac

Two former Apple engineers joined forces to create a free app that blocks tracking, ads, badware and more.

Written by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, Senior Contributing Editor March 12, 2020 at 12:02 p.m. PT

Get that unsettling feeling that you are being tracked online? I hate to break it to you, but you are. But iPhone and Mac users can fight back with Lockdown.

Lockdown is the brainchild of two former Apple engineers, Johnny Lin and Rahul Dewan, who wanted to develop an easy to use privacy app that blocked trackers and other internet nasties.

Lockdown is an open-source firewall app that block all trackers, not just within web browsers, but also those baked into the apps you use. Better still, Lockdown is an on-device firewall, and doesn't send any of your data to a third-party server.

Lockdown installs itself as a VPN on iOS and macOS, and while the free VPN service doesn't encrypt your connection, it does allow the filtering of trackers and such to take place.

There's an option to add a paid-for full unlimited VPN service to Lockdown, starting at $7.99 a month. There's a free one-week trial of the VPN service for those who want to take it for a spin before paying.

I've tried the VPN service and find it to be fast and reliable.

Lockdown comes loaded with a default configuration, but you can customize and personalize this to your heart's content.

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The Lockdown service also has one of the shortest, simplest privacy policy I've ever seen:

"Everything Lockdown does stays on your device, so what you see is literally what you get, and nothing more or less, because that's the way it should be."

I wish more apps were this clear and transparent.

It's hard to fault Lockdown. It's free, simple to use, and does what is says on the tin.

Lockdown is available for iOS and macOS, with support for other platforms in the pipeline.