Auto dismount after X time

[thany]

I'd like a feature where you can set an idle timer to X hours/minutes, after which all mounted volumes will be dismounted.

Desired behavior

In the settings or something, a simple time input field that says "auto-dismount after:" or something. After the computer is idle for the given amount of time, all mounted volumes should be dismounted.

This would be to prevent anyone from being able to read encrypted volumes, should the owner somehow be unable to shutdown the computer or dismount the drives.

Of course, since this is an idle timer, the moment in time when the volumes get dismounted, would need to shift forward as long as the pc is in use.

Let's imagine a doom scenario: leave the pc on with the volumes mounted. Why do this, is not important, let's say perhaps the pc is finishing some task. Set the idle timer to 12 hours, and the owner goes to sleep. During sleep, the owner dies, gets arrested, needs hospitalization, or anythine really where he/she can't access the pc before said event happens. The pc will remain powered on, and anyone at the house will be able to read the encrypted volumes, if it weren't for the idle timer. After 12 hours, the volumes will have dismounted and the data is safe from, well, anyone except the owner.

In the above scenario without the idle timer, the data on the encrypted volumes would be compromized should someone enter the house and go poking around on the pc, even if looking for something innocently.

Additional information

Perhaps an additional checkbox to indicate that dismounting must be forced, if needed. It's also important that this setting is not reset with each mount. The idle timer should be in effect as soon as a volume is mounted, every time. In other words, a peristent setting.

Your Environment

VeraCrypt version: 1.24-Update7

Operating system and version: Windows 10 20H2

System type: 64-bit

[alt3r-3go]

While I do understand the request, all of that can be achieved right away by simply setting the machine to shutdown after a given time (both Windows and Linux can do that, don't know about Mac but I guess the same there as well) and setting the VC option to auto-unmount volume(s) upon power state change. Would that work for you?

[thany]

I prefer not to. It's a viable workaround in many cases though. The reason I might leave my pc on, might not be because it needs the mounted volumes. Maybe I'm encoding a video or doing a large download or anything else, taking tens of hours to complete, in which case it's not diserable to set it to shutdown after X hours.

[kthchew]

@thany There's currently an option in VeraCrypt's settings to auto-dismount volumes after no data have been read or written to it for some specified amount of time, along with an option to force dismount (at least on macOS, not sure about other OSes but I assume it's the same there). Is this acceptable for your use case?

[thany]

It's a good start 😀

I'd rather have a timeout on user idleness, but I suppose I/O idleness is kind of similar.

(Also why does VeraCrypt listen to your OS' dark mode setting, it doesn't do that on Windows! Booo!)

[Gojkira]

There's currently an option in VeraCrypt's settings to auto-dismount volumes after no data have been read or written to it for some specified amount of time

I believe this is only available on the Window's version but not Linux.

[jeremeguenther]

Having this on linux would be really nice.

[lucianoshl]

It would be great to have this feature on Linux.

[robstoll]

Would be great to have this in the CLI as well, something like veracrypt --timeout