What Is Windows Goodbye? New Windows 10 Security Feature Automatically Locks PC When User Is Away

What if your Windows 10 PC can automatically lock itself when it notices that you are away? This may be hard to imagine a few years ago, but today Windows users are closer to seeing this become a reality.

Early this week, Microsoft announced the latest Windows 10 Insider Preview with new features like Windows Ink, Edge browser’s tab manager, tile folders and many more. What Microsoft forgot to tell everyone was the fact that this new build comes with a new auto-lock feature.

Internally called “Windows Goodbye,” the dynamic feature secures a personal computer from shady users by automatically locking the device when its owner has moved away. The locking mechanism is believed to be triggered by the scanning of the PC’s camera for its surroundings.

Currently, Windows Hello cameras are used to log in to the device through facial recognition technology, as per The Verge. So, it isn’t a stretch to say that the same cameras would be responsible for detecting movement of the user. Besides Windows Goodbye is the exact opposite of Windows Hello.

LaptopMag reports that Windows Hello utilizes infrared cameras to detect the face of the user. The tech site stated it tested out Windows Hello on the Surface Book, Surface Pro and EliteBook Folio G1, and it worked perfectly well with them. Since the auto-locking feature has yet to go live, it remains to be seen if it will function just as smoothly as Windows Hello.

In addition, while the log-in feature is already called Windows Hello, the auto-lock tool may not launch as Windows Goodbye, given that this is just its codename. Based on the data found on the Insider Preview build, this feature will be called Dynamic Lock.

Since information about how this security feature works is scarce, MSPowerUser has predicted that it could take 10-15 minutes of scanning the environment before it can lock the computer. The tech site added that should this be the case, Dynamic Lock would be an inconvenient security feature to have. Still, it will be helpful to users who tend to forget to lock their PC before leaving for a short period of time.