Where do I buy, and how do refunds work?
The apps ship through Apple's App Store: purchases, subscriptions, Family Sharing, and refunds are all handled by Apple under their standard terms, and we never see your payment details. The one exception is Overwrite Elite, a separate direct download sold and licensed through Lemon Squeezy, from one user on two Macs up to a site licence. All thirteen instruments are live, and each app page links to its listing.
Are these subscriptions or one-time purchases?
Both, by design. ShotLume and TallyLume have a single one-time price. HashLume and MetaLume are free to download, with one optional one-time purchase. pcapLume, HeaderLume, Digital Evidence Vault, QRLume, HexWrite, MetaWrite and Overwrite's App Store edition offer subscriptions, each with a one-time lifetime option alongside, and Overwrite Elite is sold as one-time licences. Each app page lists its exact pricing.
Are any of the apps free? What about trials?
Two are completely free: HexLume, the read-only hex viewer, and WADL Builder, which builds AI-disclosure labels. Several more are free to download, with paid options inside: HashLume, HexWrite, MetaLume, pcapLume, Digital Evidence Vault (with a read-only sample case), and Overwrite's App Store edition, whose free Preview shows every screen. Introductory offers, where they exist, are stated on the app page: today that means a lower first year for new U.S. subscribers to HeaderLume and to Overwrite's Annual Pro. Everything else states its price plainly on its app page.
Do I need an account with you?
No. There is no ProfWorkBench account system, and there never will be. Your licenses live with your Apple ID through the App Store. We could not maintain a user database without breaking our own privacy standard.
What is a Genesis Partner License?
A per-application permanent unlock, offered on select applications that otherwise run on subscriptions. It exists for early believers who want to back the mission, and for organizations that cannot carry recurring billing. You buy it once, inside the app through the App Store, and it never renews. How Genesis works.
Which apps offer Genesis, and does it cover the whole suite?
Three are Genesis-eligible today: pcapLume, HeaderLume, and Digital Evidence Vault, at $999.99 once, each. A Genesis license is specific to a single application; it does not grant access to other software in the suite. Enterprise and agency procurement runs through the secure desk. The Genesis Initiative.
We're an agency. Can we avoid subscriptions?
Yes. The Genesis Partner License is a permanent unlock, bought once per application inside the app, through the App Store. For volume or organization-wide licensing, write to the secure desk from your agency email.
How do I claim a discount?
Students and educators worldwide get 50% off, as do U.S. military members, veterans, and first responders, with our gratitude for their service. John Jay students, faculty, and staff get every tool free for life. Write to the desk from your academic or agency email; we verify your status and issue a secure App Store promo code. The discounts.
Can my department or institution buy under a discount?
No. All educational and service discounts, including App Store promo codes, are restricted to individual personal-use purchases. Institutional, corporate, bulk, or departmental acquisitions do not qualify, though they may be eligible for separate enterprise procurement. Offers are discretionary, subject to credential verification, have no cash value, and cannot be applied retroactively. For procurement, start at the secure desk.
How do I join a beta?
Two tracks: the Expert Advisory Panel for working DFIR professionals, and the Academic Partner Program for students at U.S. institutions. Both are free, and both run on TestFlight. Apply through the secure desk from your professional or academic email, naming your track; accepted testers receive TestFlight invitations by return. Details and eligibility.
Do beta testers have to join the Discord?
Yes. The beta program's private Discord server is where the collaboration actually happens, and joining it is a condition of being a beta tester. If a community channel is not for you, the shipping apps ask nothing of the kind: buy them, use them, and reach us through the desk.
I'm under 18, or my school manages my Apple ID. Can I still test?
Beta delivery runs on Apple TestFlight, so Apple's rules apply: testers must be 18 or older and meet TestFlight's regional eligibility and export-compliance requirements. Managed school Apple IDs can face provisioning restrictions; mention your setup when you apply so it can be planned around rather than discovered mid-cohort.
Can my class use these tools?
Yes. Instructors teaching digital forensics, cybersecurity, or criminal justice can apply for the Classroom Partner Program: a batch of license codes that makes every application on your syllabus free for your students, for the duration of the course. The classroom program.
Is my evidence ever uploaded anywhere?
Your files are processed on your own device, and nothing about you or your work is sent to ProfWorkBench. Nothing is uploaded to be analyzed unless you switch on a feature that says so: Digital Evidence Vault's network transcription, off by default, sends a recording's audio to Apple to be transcribed. The applications ship without analytics SDKs, ad frameworks, or crash harvesters. Some features do contact outside services, and a few do so by default; each app's page names every host, what it receives and when, and what its Zero Telemetry switch, where it has one, turns off. The standards.
Which apps contact outside services, and when?
A few features need an outside service. Some run by default: HeaderLume sends an email's relay addresses to ipwho.is and the sender's domain to rdap.org on every analysis; pcapLume, with Pro, sends the public addresses in Top Talkers to GeoJS; Digital Evidence Vault sends a file's hash, never the file, to its timestamping services and asks time.apple.com for the time at each capture; MetaWrite loads Apple Maps tiles to show where a photo was taken. Others run only once you set them up or ask: HeaderLume's VirusTotal check and pcapLume's MalwareBazaar check use your own keys, and pcapLume's Shodan and Censys lookups (Pro) and threat-feed downloads run when you press for them, or for the rest of a session if you choose that. Each app's page lists every outside connection. Where an app has a Zero Telemetry switch, its page says exactly what the switch turns off; none of them stops Apple's App Store check.
What does this website itself collect?
Zero cookies, zero tracking pixels, and no analytics platform of any kind, not even a "privacy-friendly" one. Server logs are the minimum required to serve the site, nothing is ever sold, and nothing is shared except with the service providers that host the site. The full policy, in plain language: privacy.
Will the output hold up in court?
No software can promise that, and we don't. What the instruments do is make their records checkable: hashes recorded when a file is captured or ingested, logs whose alteration can be detected (pcapLume's Chain of Custody Log, though not against someone with full write access to the Mac, and Digital Evidence Vault's custody log), and PDF reports that state what they cover. Admissibility is always a ruling for a specific court on a specific record, so involve counsel early on jurisdiction and procedure.
Where is the written privacy policy?
The full Privacy Policy and Terms of Use are published on this site, and the standards page keeps a plain-language summary. Any data-handling question, formal or otherwise, is answered directly through the desk.
Which apps run on which Apple devices?
Most of the bench is macOS: pcapLume, HeaderLume, HashLume, HexLume, HexWrite, OverWrite, MetaWrite, MetaLume, and ShotLume. Some of those are Apple-silicon only and state their minimum macOS on their app page; HexWrite, for instance, needs macOS 15 or later on Apple silicon. QRLume is a universal purchase across iPhone, iPad and Mac, Digital Evidence Vault spans iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch as a single universal purchase, TallyLume runs on iPhone and iPad, and WADL Builder runs on iPhone, iPad and Apple-silicon Macs. Each app page states its platforms.
Is there a Windows or Linux version?
No. The catalog is Apple-native by charter, designed explicitly for Apple systems. The privacy architecture depends on that choice; evidentiary data is processed on your own Mac, iPhone or iPad, and every guarantee on the standards page is engineered against that platform.
Where do the app microsites fit in?
Several instruments keep dedicated deep-dive sites, such as pcaplume.com and headerlume.com. Those are supplementary reading. The pages here on profworkbench.com are the canonical reference for pricing, availability, and support.
Who answers, and how private is it?
The bench. Messages are encrypted to our PGP keys inside your browser before they leave your device; the relay that carries them can count tickets but cannot read them. The founder reads every ticket and answers many himself. Open a secure channel.
How does the secure desk actually work?
Three verifiable steps. Your message is PGP-encrypted to our public keys inside your browser, so the message never crosses the wire in plaintext; only the inquiry type you choose travels unencrypted. The ciphertext travels through a relay that can count tickets but cannot read them, into an end-to-end-encrypted mailbox. It is decrypted at the desk, where the bench answers and the founder reads every ticket. Delivery notifications carry metadata only, never message content.
How do I verify the encryption is real?
Two ways, both on the Contact page. The form's Show the Encrypted Message panel captures the PGP payload on-page when you send, so you can confirm no plaintext elements are transmitted over the wire. And the fingerprint panel computes our key's fingerprint in your browser, with the public key available to download; compare that fingerprint across separate channels before you trust it.
Found an accessibility gap?
Accessibility is an engineering mandate, not a checklist: every instrument is built against Apple's Human Interface Guidelines, and we list an accessibility feature for an app only after verifying it there, so support differs from app to app. Each app's page and its App Store accessibility listing say what is verified. Reports go straight to engineering through the desk, and they are prioritized. Our statement.