Set up separate locks for several iPhone web apps

In PWA Lock, every web app you lock is its own app: its own address, its own cover, its own lock password and its own relock. Unlocking your journal does nothing for your chat app, and forgetting the chat app's password does not touch the forum. One account holds all of them, and the plan you pick sets how many: 2 on Starter, 6 on Personal, 15 on Pro. This guide is for the reader with two or three web apps in daily use. It assumes you have followed the complete setup guide for one app, and covers what changes from the second app on.

How does PWA Lock keep several apps apart?

Each app you add gets a locked copy at its own address, name.pwalock.com, and everything that matters to the lock lives there:

• The cover. A plain password field, or a working cover app such as the Calculator, Weather or 2048 that hides the field until you perform a cover passcode on it.
• The lock password. 8 to 128 characters, separate from your account password and from every other app's.
• The unlock. Entering the lock password sets a cookie for that address only, tied to that app and to your account login. It cannot be reused for another app, and it ends after 15 minutes or within a moment of the app being hidden.

What the apps share is the account: one email, one password, one plan, one dashboard listing them all. Someone with your account login can see that list but still needs each lock password. What PWA Lock protects, and what it does not draws the boundary in full.

How should you plan the set?

Plan first, because apps cannot be edited or deleted from the dashboard yet. Decide three things per app: the name, the cover and the lock password. A worked example:

Three notes on those choices:

• Names become addresses. The name is lowercased and anything that is not a letter or digit becomes a hyphen, so Night Journal lives at night-journal.pwalock.com. Names are unique across the whole service, not just your account; if one is taken, the form says so. The name is also the label under the icon.
• The same cover means the same icon. Two Calculator covers give you two identical icons, told apart only by their names. Cover apps: what a calculator on your home screen can hide describes each cover, and what a cover does not do.
• Passwords should differ. Nothing forces it, but three doors with one key are one door. A password manager makes three long, different ones easy to keep.

What changes when you create the second and third app?

The steps are the setup guide's, repeated: Add an app on the dashboard, Create app, Open app, unlock once, then Share and Add to Home Screen in Safari, as Apple describes in its guide to web apps. What differs from the first time:

• The dashboard counts. It shows how many of your plan's apps you have used, for example 2 / 6, and disables Create app once the plan is full. Upgrading on the billing page raises the ceiling.
• Each app gets its own handoff. Open app carries your account login to that app's address with a one-time code that expires after 60 seconds. You do this once per app.
• Check the site before you install it. Unlock it in Safari and use it for a minute, including its own login. Sites that sign in through Google, Apple or another domain may not work through a proxy; Why a website login may fail inside a web-app wrapper explains which and why.
• Install each app from its own address. Add to Home Screen adds the page you are on, so check the address bar before you tap Share. The icon is the cover's, or a lock for the plain cover; the suggested name is the app name.

What does your home screen look like afterwards?

Three icons: a calculator, a weather app and a game, each labeled with the name you chose. Tapping one opens its lock page: the cover.

Under the surface, iOS gives a home-screen web app its own storage, separate from Safari; and since each locked app is a different address, their storage is separate from one another in any case. WebKit's notes on Safari 17.2 say that cookies are copied over when a web app is created, including login state, and that no other website data is shared afterwards. In practice:

• The first launch of each installed app may already be logged in to your PWA Lock account, or may ask you to log in; then it shows the lock page. The account login is kept per device and per address for 7 days, so each installed app asks again about weekly. Home-screen web app vs Safari tab explains the pattern.
• The app's manifest confines it to its own address (its scope, as MDN documents), so the login page on pwalock.com is outside it and may appear with browser controls before you return to the cover.

Two honest limits. The locked address stays in Safari's history from the install step unless you clear it, which Apple documents. And the original website stays reachable at its own address for anyone with its login; PWA Lock gates the locked address only.

How does relocking work across apps?

Each app relocks on its own, and nothing you do in one changes another.

Which plan fits how many apps?

The app count decides it for most people: 2 apps on Starter ($5 a month), 6 on Personal ($6) and 15 on Pro ($7), and it counts every app on the account, including one abandoned after a typo. Two apps fit Starter exactly, with no room for a mistake; three fit Personal with room to spare.

Requests a day are shared by all your apps and matter only for heavy use: a journal opened twice a day costs little, a chat app that refreshes constantly costs more, and past the allowance pages answer Traffic limit reached. Please try again later. until the window resets. Starter, Personal or Pro: which PWA Lock plan fits you? explains what counts as a request and compares the plans in detail; you can switch on the billing page later.

Every plan starts with a 14-day free trial with the plan's full limits: the card is saved at checkout and first charged when the trial ends; cancel before then and you pay nothing.

What can go wrong?

Anything else, write to contact@pwalock.com with the app's address, never a password.