Friday, 4 January 2008

Apple Mac OSX, keyboard shortcut to lock screen

A common question from switchers to OSX from another operating system, is how they lock the screen with a keyboard shortcut.

There is no built in method, but there is a free addon that does it for you: LockTight which you can get here http://www.gkoya.com/2006/11/23/locktight-for-mac-os-x-intel/

Update: I accidently deleted the startup item to make LockTight available on start. I discovered that you can replace it by navigating to:

~/Library/PreferencePanes/LockTight then right click or CTRL click, select 'show package contents' then go to Contents/Resources and look for 'SleepTightAgent'.

If you place this in StartUp items it will be available from startup.

5 comments:

  1. Hi - I've documented another approach here:

    locking your screen under osx

    Cheers,

    Mark

    ReplyDelete
  2. hey
    I created a simpler way to lock your session, based on the idea of LockTight: Just type "Shift-CMD-L"

    Check out my program:


    http://www.aebischers.com/2010/04/07/applelock-beta-lock-your-mac/

    BB

    ReplyDelete
  3. Better yet, why not help build a keyboard locking application for Mac OS X: http://www.indiegogo.com/Mac-OS-X-Keyboard-Lock-Application-Lockey

    ReplyDelete
  4. Well, you can also ALT+CMD+EJECT which will send the mac to sleep. This locks the screen (if you have password set) and save on battery/power.

    The system wakes up again if you touch the keyboard.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Shift-Ctrl-Eject just puts your display to sleep - it is the same as the screensaver activating, so if your screensaver requires a password, you have locked your screen.

    It doesn't put the Mac to sleep, so doesn't impact on performance

    ReplyDelete