Lockdown Mode

Screen mode controls how the browser is locked down while the exam runs — keeping candidates in the exam instead of in another tab.

Fullscreen Enforcement

The exam locks into fullscreen. Leaving fullscreen, switching tabs, clicking away, or losing window focus registers a violation: the exam pauses behind a warning dialog. The candidate can return to the exam, dismissing the violation, or end the session themselves. A violation only starts counting after at least one second in the violated state, so a single accidental flicker of focus loss isn't punished.

Violation Limits — Three Independent Budgets

Limits exist as tolerance, not as an on/off switch, because a single moment outside the exam window rarely means cheating — a stray OS notification stealing focus, a slow fullscreen re-entry after a permission prompt, an accessibility tool briefly taking focus, or an honest one-off mistake. Ending the session on the very first flicker would punish legitimate candidates as often as it catches dishonest ones. Configurable limits let you decide, per exam, how much benefit of the doubt to extend before enforcement kicks in — including none at all, if the exam calls for zero tolerance.

Every lockdown-enabled step has three separate limits, each optional and independent of the others:

• Number of violations allowed — how many times the candidate can leave and return before the session ends on the next attempt. Setting this to 0 means the very first violation ends the session immediately, with no warning dialog shown.
• Seconds allowed per violation — how long the candidate has, for a single violation, to return before being timed out automatically. This is the countdown running silently behind the warning dialog.
• Total violation seconds allowed — a cumulative budget across the whole attempt. Even if each individual violation is short, once the sum of all violation time crosses this limit, the session ends the next time the candidate returns.

All three accept -1 for unlimited. Any of them can also be set to 0 for zero tolerance — the corresponding check ends the session immediately instead of granting any grace period.

Excused Interruptions

Certain actions unavoidably take the candidate out of fullscreen or blur the window — picking a file to upload, or approving a browser's camera/microphone permission prompt. These are recognized and given their own grace windows, in seconds, with the same -1 (unlimited) / 0 (zero tolerance) conventions as the violation limits above, rather than counting as ordinary violations. If the candidate doesn't return within that window, the session still ends. Each grace window is also capped by a repeat-abuse limit — using the same excuse over and over in a short span eventually ends the session outright, on the assumption it's being used as a loophole rather than a genuine interruption.

Relaxed Mode

Relaxed mode drops the fullscreen requirement and falls back to focus and visibility tracking: tab switches and window blurs are still recorded as violations, but the browser isn't forced fullscreen. This is what admits phones and tablets — fullscreen enforcement is unavailable on iPhone, so a non-relaxed lockdown blocks iPhone candidates at the pre-start gate.

Resuming After a Disconnect

Returning to the exam through the warning dialog is not a "resume" — it happens instantly, within the same session, and only affects the violation budgets above. "Resume" refers to something different: the candidate actually leaving — closing the tab, losing their connection, or getting disconnected — and coming back afterward to a new browser session. That is only possible while the candidate is still within their violation limits; once those are exceeded, the session ends outright and there's nothing left to resume.

For a candidate who still has room left in their violation budget, resuming is governed by two separate, independently configurable conditions: a maximum number of resumes for the session as a whole, and a maximum break duration — how long the candidate has, after their last recorded activity, to reconnect before the resume window closes.

Reconnecting is not a way around the violation limits — a candidate who has already exceeded their violation count or time budget cannot reconnect even if they still have resumes or break time left; the two sets of limits are checked independently, and both are re-checked on the server at reconnect time, so a stale or tampered client can't bypass them.

Single-Monitor Enforcement

Optionally require exactly one connected display. The monitor count is checked at the fullscreen gate and watched during the exam — connecting a second screen mid-exam is caught. The check uses a browser API only Chrome and Edge on desktop provide; on other browsers candidates are blocked even with one monitor, so enabling this narrows the audience to Chrome/Edge (see Device Compatibility).

Auto-Flagging for Review

Separately from termination, a step can auto-flag a candidate's session for manual review once their combined break time and violation time crosses a configurable threshold — without ending the session. This surfaces borderline cases to a proctor without being as disruptive as an outright termination.

Alarm Sound

An audible alarm can be toggled on or off for when a violation triggers, independent of every limit above.

What Lockdown Can and Cannot Do

Keyboard shortcuts (copy, print, dev tools combos) are suppressed best-effort, but no web page can block OS-level switches like Alt-Tab — lockdown detects and records escapes rather than making them impossible. Violations surface live as chips in the Exam Monitor and permanently in the session's event log, so both proctors and reviewers see exactly what happened and when. For airtight integrity, pair lockdown with webcam and screen recording.

After Termination: Reinstating a Session

A terminated session can be reinstated by an admin, who chooses — separately for the violation budget and the resume budget — whether history carries over or resets for the new attempt, and can override either limit for that one candidate, bounded so it can never be set below what's already been used if carrying over. See Reinstate a Session.

Where Violations Are Recorded

Violations surface live as chips in the Exam Monitor while the exam is running, and are permanently recorded in the session's Audit Log — every violation, dialog interaction, and termination reason, timestamped.

Pair With Recording

For stronger integrity, combine lockdown with Webcam Recording and Screen Recording — lockdown detects and records escapes from the exam window; recording captures what happened on camera and screen throughout.