What's the use case? Probably not meaningfully so, given how Zotero stores data locally, but depending on what you're after, there may be other options.
My use case is to support the ability to have a locked lab notebook (just a collection of notes, documents, etc) on a computer that might be accessible by other parties. Could also use Zotero as a personal journal :)
If those other parties have access to your user account on that PC you an safely regard everything under that account compromised, password protected or not. If those other parties do not have access to your user account, the OS will do blanket protection for you.
Apologies to OP to hijack his FR, but I register specifically after researching for this issue and found this.
As background, I'm a long time user of mybase, but their web clipper has become acutely lacking with the latest versions. I just discovered Zotero after looking once again for alternatives and it's the most accurate I've ever seen and could've hoped for (have been using Joplin for a while as a mybase alternative for this.)
To the point, Mybase still offers a neat thing: password-protected use of the app that activates after it being idle for awhile. I like that feature much, as similarly as OP's, a few of my documents contain sensitive data that isn't for everybody's eyes. Think I understand the POV that Zotero db's philosophy is envisaged to be open so it's futile to do protection way, but still, one could have a new, specific document type (perhaps with limited functionality, e.g. no attachments, etc.) that would allow for password-protected access (e.g. via one-way encryption of the db record) that could make for an interesting and valuable feature in certain scenarios (e.g. I use to keep sensitive financial and other data in a mybase document). My 2c.
You could just install a Zotero instance/profile/data directory (that has the collections needing protection) in an encrypted folder (the password for which you would provide only to authorized users).
@tim820: this one looked feasible. Imagined a password prompt from Windows showing up when accessing a protected zotero profile data folder, but password folder protection was removed since Win10, unfortunately.
@emilianoeheyns: that level of granularity is insufficient. I don't need to lock my whole computer, just some files.
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Probably not meaningfully so, given how Zotero stores data locally, but depending on what you're after, there may be other options.
As background, I'm a long time user of mybase, but their web clipper has become acutely lacking with the latest versions. I just discovered Zotero after looking once again for alternatives and it's the most accurate I've ever seen and could've hoped for (have been using Joplin for a while as a mybase alternative for this.)
To the point, Mybase still offers a neat thing: password-protected use of the app that activates after it being idle for awhile. I like that feature much, as similarly as OP's, a few of my documents contain sensitive data that isn't for everybody's eyes. Think I understand the POV that Zotero db's philosophy is envisaged to be open so it's futile to do protection way, but still, one could have a new, specific document type (perhaps with limited functionality, e.g. no attachments, etc.) that would allow for password-protected access (e.g. via one-way encryption of the db record) that could make for an interesting and valuable feature in certain scenarios (e.g. I use to keep sensitive financial and other data in a mybase document). My 2c.
@emilianoeheyns: that level of granularity is insufficient. I don't need to lock my whole computer, just some files.