How To Lock Your Desktop in Leopard

Comment from gruhlke
Time: February 21, 2009, 11:25 pm

well, but there is an other more simple way…. Use the key-utility (in german its called Schlüsselbund) from Progams -> Utilitys. It gives you the ability to place an icon in the menu bar which do this yob as well without downloading anything… Please excuse my simple english…

Liebe Grüße
Gruhlke

Comment from inaminit
Time: February 21, 2009, 11:33 pm

If you have Fast User Switching enable through the System Preferences/Accounts, you can just click on Login Window in the drop down menu from the menu bar to do the same thing.

Comment from Paul Horowitz
Time: February 21, 2009, 11:46 pm

I knew there was a way! Thank you

Comment from michele
Time: February 22, 2009, 3:51 am

As gruhlke said, start Keychain Access.app, Preferences -> Show Status in Menu Bar, and you get a nice “lock” icon that let’s you lock screen and keychains.

Comment from Ronny-André
Time: February 22, 2009, 3:54 am

I use the Keychain Access method. Gives a nice little lock icon in the menu bar where I can lock the screen

Comment from Chance
Time: February 22, 2009, 6:11 am

I use the Locker widget from apples website, it works just like windows switch user button. Hope that helps!

Comment from Cathi
Time: February 22, 2009, 6:46 am

I have hot corners enabled in the Screen Saver Pref. Pane. Point the mouse in the corner of the screen and poof: screensaver activated with password protection

Comment from CdtDelta
Time: February 22, 2009, 7:28 am

There’s also a preference pane app called Lock Tight that I use on all my Mac’s. It let’s you do a key command lock screen like doing a Windows-L on a M$ OS.

Comment from John
Time: February 22, 2009, 7:32 am

Like Cathi, I use Exposé’s hot corners to lock my Mac. Set the screen saver to lock when the screen saver starts then pick a corner to start the screen saver when the mouse is parked there. It’ll start the screen saver and lock the Mac within less than a second. No third-party scripts, no extra clicking, just move the mouse to the correct corner.

Comment from Pavel
Time: February 22, 2009, 2:33 pm

I’m with John; very handy.

Except every once in awhile, it refuses to work until I reboot.

Comment from cirrus
Time: February 22, 2009, 2:47 pm

You can also lock the screen by running the following in Terminal:

/System/Library/CoreServices/Menu\ Extras/User.menu/Contents/Resources/CGSession -suspend

Comment from Rubni110
Time: February 22, 2009, 6:08 pm

Sizzling Keys has an option to create a keyboard shortcut to start up the screen saver, which works better then a screen corner or apple script.

http://www.yellowmug.com/sk4it/

Comment from TheSkeptic
Time: February 23, 2009, 2:29 am

You don’t need to download anything – or enable Fast User Switching.

Gruhlke is on the right path – Open “Keychain Access”, select Preferences and then tick “Show status in menu bar”. You can then select “Lock Screen” anytime you need to.

Comment from Tim Brazer
Time: February 23, 2009, 9:37 am

I was looking for a script like this!

Pingback from How to lock your desktop in Leopard | Tim Brazer dot com
Time: February 23, 2009, 9:42 am

[...] can however lock your desktop with an automator app named Lock Desktop.app. All you have to do is double click the icon and [...]

Comment from kadi
Time: March 2, 2009, 6:47 am

For a keyboard shortcut solution for Terminal.app see:

http://codesnippets.joyent.com/tag/lock

Comment from Alan Hecht
Time: March 4, 2009, 6:44 pm

I’ve seen and tried the solutions listed here. In this case a simple one-trick pony worked best for me: try LockTight (free). LockTight give a system preferences pane where you can set a hotkey for locking the desktop. Yes, you can do similar with Sizzling, QuickSilver, etc, but it’s nice to have a dedicated icon for this in prefs so I don’t have to track down what tool I used to set it.

Here’s a link:
http://www.freemacware.com/locktight

Comment from Rob James Chaning Record
Time: April 8, 2009, 11:30 am

I’m looking for a way to cover over or lock a desktop space in Leopard Spaces. Examples of use: keep someone out of your work. Stop productivity-eating visits to social applications.

Comment from Dusty
Time: April 17, 2009, 7:49 am

I don’t know why anything more than hot corners is needed…. What could be easier or quicker than moving your mouse to the corner of the screen. I have been doing this for 5 years without any problems.

Comment from developing purposes
Time: April 29, 2009, 2:44 pm

++ inaminit ; fast user switching is my saviour

Comment from BeSweeet
Time: May 11, 2009, 2:32 pm

I enabled the password thing in System Preferences/Security, yet that didn’t work when I came out of the screen saver.

Doing the whole Keychain thing didn’t work either.

The only thing that worked is the Apple Script download as stated in the original post .

Comment from kumar
Time: May 13, 2009, 8:46 am

UPDATE: inaminit says “If you have Fast User Switching enable through the System Preferences/Accounts, you can just click on Login Window in the drop down menu from the menu bar to do the same thing.”

Comment from Wes
Time: June 3, 2009, 6:05 am

With the others on hot corners in the screensaver. Keep in mind the easiest corner to hit with a mouse is bottom-left if you’re right handed. You may want to avoid the easy ones, the hardest to hit for right-handed is bottom right, try it. Reverse the two for left-handed mouse users.

Comment from Wes
Time: June 3, 2009, 6:05 am

With the others on hot corners in the screensaver. Keep in mind the easiest corner to hit with a mouse is bottom-left if you’re right handed. You may want to avoid the easy ones, the hardest to hit for right-handed is bottom right, try it. Reverse the two for left-handed mouse users.

Comment from Shayne
Time: June 23, 2009, 10:43 pm

google locktight for a keycombo pref pane solution

Comment from Åsmund
Time: December 2, 2009, 12:41 pm

Logging out is not the same as locking. Seriously, what?

The original tip is as helpful as saying “to save power, turn off the computer.”

Pingback from Lock your Mac Desktop with the Locker Widget – OS X Daily
Time: January 19, 2010, 7:58 am

[...] access. The uses for this are many, but I am still surprised Apple does not provide a simple way to lock your Mac outside of either a screensaver or fast user logout with Shift-Command-Option-Q. Anyway, check out [...]