While I seldom use the Keychain Access application, the Jaguar version has a couple of interesting twists. I told you about one last week - the lock icon in the menu bar that lets you lock the screen without having to turn on the password feature in Screen Effects.

But while I was mucking around with that one, I came upon another cool new Keychain Access feature. Namely, Secure Notes. If you have any text you'd like to protect from prying eyes, you're going to love it. Just launch Keychain Access and click on the Note icon in the toolbar. Type a name for your note, then type the note's contents and click the Add button. Now click the note's name and click the Access Control tab in the bottom part of the window. Check the checkbox to ask for Keychain Password before allowing access to the note. That's it.

It's great for three reasons I can think of:

First, most people wouldn't think of looking for your sensitive text information in the Keychain Access app.

Second, unless you give out your keychain password freely (and I know most of you aren't that dumb), the note is protected by strong encryption, and thus it's unlikely to be breached by casual (or even formal) users.

Third, you already paid for everything - it's part of Jaguar.

Tomorrow... Hiding Sensitive Files from Friends and Foes Alike

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Bob LeVitus is a leading authority on Mac OS and the author of 39 books, including Mac OS X For Dummies and The Little iTunes Book.