---
title: "Locked and ephemeral profiles · Docs"
description: "Encrypt a Donut Browser profile with a password, keep an ephemeral profile in memory only, or wipe cookies and history each time the browser closes."
url: "https://donutbrowser.com/docs/private-profiles/"
---

# Locked, ephemeral and clear-on-close profiles

Three profile modes limit what stays on your disk. All three are free.

| Mode | What stays on disk | Use it for |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Password protected | Encrypted profile data | An account that must survive restarts, on a computer others can reach |
| Clear data on close | Extensions and bookmarks only | A clean start each time, with the same device and settings |
| Ephemeral | Nothing, where the system has a RAM disk | One session that leaves no trace |

## Password-protected profiles

Turn on **Password Protected** in **Create New Profile**, or open the **Security** section of the profile panel and click **Set**. The password needs 8 characters or more, and the browser must be stopped. A password-protected profile cannot be ephemeral, and you can set a password only when you create one profile at a time.

- Every file of the profile is encrypted with AES-256-GCM. File names are replaced with keyed hashes, so the folder does not show which sites you use.
- At launch you enter the password. Donut decrypts the profile into a copy in RAM and the browser runs from that copy. The copy on disk stays encrypted.
- **Settings → Keep Decrypted Profiles In RAM** keeps the RAM copy between launches for a faster start. The disk copy stays encrypted either way.
- The **Security** section also has **Change**, **Remove** and **Validate**. **Validate** checks a password without opening the profile.
- Nobody can recover a lost password, Donut included. The profile's data is then gone.

![Security section of the profile panel. Text says the profile is not encrypted and offers New password and Confirm new password fields with a Set button.](https://donutbrowser.com/img/docs/profile-security.webp "Set a password to encrypt a profile's data at rest.")

![Unlock Profile dialog shown when launching a password-protected profile. Text: Enter the password to unlock Social · Brand main. A Password field and the buttons Cancel and Unlock.](https://donutbrowser.com/img/docs/profile-password.webp "A password-protected profile asks for its password at launch.")

A locked profile records no visited sites in traffic statistics, and its export carries the configuration only.

## Clear data on close

**Clear data on close** wipes cookies, history and cache each time the browser closes. Turn it on in the **Overview** section of the profile panel, or for many profiles with **Edit selected**. Extensions and bookmarks stay, and so do the fingerprint and the proxy. The profile always starts clean, without the last session's tabs.

## Ephemeral profiles

An ephemeral profile keeps its browser data in memory and loses it when the browser closes. Turn on **Ephemeral** in **Create New Profile**. Over the local API, `"ephemeral": true` does the same, and `"temporary": true` makes an ephemeral profile for one automation run that is deleted when its browser stops.

- Linux uses `/dev/shm`, which is always in memory. macOS uses a RAM disk. Windows uses a RAM disk when one is installed.
- When no RAM disk is available, Donut uses a folder on disk and overwrites it when the browser closes.
- Your operating system can swap memory to disk under load, so traces of a session can still be recoverable from swap.
- Ephemeral profiles have no cookies to manage, no extension group and no sync, and they never record visited sites.

## Deleted profiles

A deleted profile waits in the [trash](https://donutbrowser.com/docs/profiles#trash) until it expires. **Delete forever** and **Empty trash** overwrite every file of the profile before they remove it.