With the new version 5.0 of mirabyte’s free FrontFace Lockdown Tool, any Windows PC can be configured as a protected kiosk terminal or as a digital signage player for unattended continuous operation with just a few clicks.
The Windows operating system for PCs is primarily intended for use on normal desktop and office PCs. However, there are also various specialised applications where Windows is also used: These include kiosk terminals, which are public-facing PCs that are restricted for running only a specific application. Another example are so-called digital signage player PCs, where the computers are used to control information and advertising screens (usually without interactive operation).
Although Windows offers with the “Assigned Access Mode” a possibility to limit the usage to just one application, only so called Windows Store applications can be selected here. Conventional Win32 desktop applications (“EXE”) are not supported. Therefore, this mode is useless for most use cases.
The brand new version 5.0 also supports Windows 11.
Various settings and configuration options can be selected via an intuitive user interface, such as automatically starting the PC without entering a password, blocking critical keyboard shortcuts such as CTRL+ALT+DEL or disabling energy-saving functions and the screen saver. The settings can be saved as profiles and can easily be used for provisioning additional PCs in the same way.
As a portable application, the FrontFace Lockdown Tool is ready to use and does not need to be installed first. This allows users to run the application directly – for example from a USB stick. The FrontFace Lockdown Tool is truly a multi-tool for administrators who need to configure Windows PCs for specialised use cases.
The FrontFace Lockdown Tool can be used with all Windows-compatible kiosk and digital signage applications. However, it harmonises particularly well with mirabyte’s own FrontFace software, which can be used to implement both interactive kiosk applications and non-interactive digital signage applications professionally – without requiring any programming knowledge.
The FrontFace Lockdown Tool is free (freeware) and compatible with Windows 10 and Windows 11. The download is available on the mirabyte homepage:
