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Back in June 2012, I blogged about ‘‘ and then in January 2014,. This time round I thought I’d revisit this feature and report back on my findings trying to lock the screen of a Mac running the recently released OS X El Capitan 10.11, since during OS X training courses I find that this is a very common question I am asked by students so I’ve written a blog showing you how to lock your computer screen instantly in OSX El Capitan.
UPDATE: OSX Yosemite Login Screen for Windows 7 is now available for download. You might be aware of the upcoming OS X Yosemite (version 10.10) Mac operating system from Apple which is going to release for public at the end of this year. Currently its available for developers and beta testers only. Why doesn't my iPhone 4 show any calendar info on the lockscreen? I have the option turned on in the notifications part of the settings app. Does anyone else's work? That was one of the features I was most looking forward to. It works great (along with the weather) on the notification tray, but I want to see it on the lockscreen too.
First of all, let’s explain what we mean by ‘locking the screen’. Locking your Mac’s screen involves the OS X login window being displayed quickly without having to save and quit all documents and apps and fully log out of your user account before you can walk away from your computer. This can be a great security measure to compliment a secure user account password.
While this may not prevent your Mac from being stolen or your data being erased, it can be a very quick and easy way to prevent unauthorised access to your user account and data. The easiest and quickest way to lock an OS X screen is to put the display to sleep, ensuring you have configured your Mac first to ask for a password after sleep or screen saver.
How to lock your Mac screen using Display Sleep Firstly, you will need to have your login password enabled for sleep and screen saver: Step 1 Launch System Preferences Step 2 Open the ‘Security & Privacy’ preference pane and select the ‘General’ tab Step 3 Select the checkbox next to ‘Require password after sleep or screen saver begins’ – you can select either immediately or a preferred time interval Setting the ‘Require password’ option to ‘immediately’ is therefore the more secure option and will toggle a locked screen immediately your computer goes to sleep or initiates the screen saver. Notice there is an option here to ‘Show a message when the screen is locked’. Simply unlock the golden padlock with your admin user account credentials and then click ‘Set Lock Message’ to add some text to appear at the lock screen. Step 4 Close System Preferences and you’re done! Once you have the password feature setup, you are ready to toggle display sleep. To do this you can perform EITHER of the following:.
Use the keyboard shortcut of holding down the ‘Control+Shift+Eject’ keys together (if your mac has an internal Optical Drive and an Eject key). Use the keyboard shortcut of holding down the ‘Control+Shift+Power’ keys together (if your mac does NOT have an internal Optical Drive or an Eject key) In both cases, you will see your Mac’s display shut off immediately, while the system continues to run in the background. This is not sleep mode so your Mac will still function, you have just put the display to sleep. Press any button to wake the display up and you should be asked to authenticate with your user’s password to unlock the screen.
Notice the ‘Lock Message’ at the bottom which was added in Security & Privacy Preferences. Other methods of locking your Mac There are other methods of locking your Mac. For example; You can simply switch back to the login window;.
You can enable a Keychain Access status menu in your menu bar;. You can configure a screen saver Hot Corner; or, more obviously. You can just put your Mac to sleep However, for me, I think these methods either take longer to setup and use, or require data to be saved first, therefore I prefer the Display Sleep option. Below, I’ve detailed how you can toggle these other methods should you prefer them. How to enable a lock screen experience by quickly switching back to the login window An alternative way to lock the screen is to just click on your username on the right top corner of the Finder menu bar and choose ‘Login Window’. This will simply take you to the login window where you need to enter your password to log back in. However, this doesn’t technically just lock the screen, this saves unsaved changes for example caching all your apps, documents and background processes to be able to bring back the login window and puts your user account in a ‘reserved’ state.
This leverages the Application and Document resume feature Apple introduced with OS X Lion. So, this can take a while depending on what apps, documents and background processes you have open and if there are any unsaved changes. Also, this feature would require ‘fast user switching’ to be enabled in Users & Groups preferences. Step 1 Launch System Preferences Step 2 Open the ‘Users & Groups’ preference pane and select ‘Login Options’ at the bottom left Step 3 Unlock the golden padlock with your admin user account credentials Step 4 Select the checkbox next to ’Show fast user switching menu as’ Step 5 Select the Fast user switching menu at top right of your screen which should display the name of the current logged in user and select ‘Login Window’ You should now be returned back to the login window, effectively locking your Mac from anyone else accessing it, but without having to fully log out as a user.
Remember the ‘Display Sleep Lock’ feature quickly shuts down the display screen and forces user authentication WITHOUT caching and preserving the user environment. So ‘Display Sleep Lock’ is a much quicker option if you need to run away from your desk quickly, as returning to the Login Window may take some time if there are files and apps to cache and settings to save. If you are concerned about loss of data though, switching back to the Login Window could be the safer bet. How to enable a lock screen experience by adding the Keychain status menu to the main menu bar of OS X A popular option for locking the screen is to add the Keychain status menu to the main menu bar of OS X.
I have always used the keychain menubar icon to lock the screen. Nice to have in labs as well, but one thing with the labs an in the newer OS’s is that it goes to sleep the screen instead of turning on the screen saver.
In a lab this is a pain for people because the screen is dark and if someone temporarily left and stayed logged in another user sits down and wakes the screen and someone is logged in so they move to another and the same thing. With the screensaver active when its locked you can see that someone is logged in then visually and not pick that computer then.
I have a custom screensaver made that slowly flashes the username of who is logged in and our school logo flying around that was built with Quartz Composer. Anyway, I finally found a way to get the screensaver to kick back in instead of sleeping the screen!
I think a bug report response is how I found out about it or Apple seed. But here is the command to force the screen saver on when locking the screen using the Keychain lock instead of sleeping the screen. Defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist immediateLockLaunchesScreenSaver -boolean true.
I'm running Yosemite on a late 2009 iMac and recently switched to a wireless (HP) keyboard and mouse. I am using a package called 'Karabiner' to enable brightness, volume, and media control shortcuts with the F1-F12 keys. Now I am looking for a way to make a shortcut to lock my screen like I did with ctrl+shift+eject on the old keyboard. When I am in system preferences - keyboard - shortcuts - app shortcuts, I hit the '+' button, set Application to 'All Applications', set Menu Title to 'Lock Screen', and when I type in the Keyboard Shortcut box nothing appears. The only keys that show up here are those from the numpad.
I really need a way do lock the screen quickly from the keyboard. Just figured this out. In Karabiner there are a bunch of options to map a key to the 'power' key. The one I used that is working is under 'For PC Users' - 'Change PC PrintScreen Key, ScollLock Key, and Pause/BreakKey' - then check 'Pause/Break Key to Power'. Then you can use the Ctrl + Shift + Pause/Break to lock your screen.
Now you are talking about the eject key which is for older macs but I see that there is an option to map Pause/Break to the Eject key as well. Either way Ctrl + Shift + Pause/Break should do it. Apple Footer. This site contains user submitted content, comments and opinions and is for informational purposes only. Apple may provide or recommend responses as a possible solution based on the information provided; every potential issue may involve several factors not detailed in the conversations captured in an electronic forum and Apple can therefore provide no guarantee as to the efficacy of any proposed solutions on the community forums. Apple disclaims any and all liability for the acts, omissions and conduct of any third parties in connection with or related to your use of the site.
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