5 Simple Ways to Lock Your Mac

Are you tired of having kids or roommates using your Mac? All you have to do is lock your Mac before you leave the computer.

When you lock your Mac, you can only unlock it with a password or fingerprint if you own a new MacBook Pro that supports the touch pad.

There are many ways to lock your Mac. You can set it to lock itself when the screen goes to Sleep mode. You can also lock your computer with keyboard shortcuts. Or, if you're using a MacBook Pro with a touch pad, you can even add a lock button to it.

Here, HowToGeek will guide you through the installation steps of all these and more.

Lock the Mac when the system goes Idle.

To get started, open System Preferences and navigate to the Security & Privacy group . On the General tab , select theRequire password ... option after sleep or screen saver begins . Click on the drop down menu and select immediately.

When you turn on the Mac from sleep mode or from Screen Saver mode, it now asks you to enter your login password.

To adjust the amount of time Macs turn off the screen, look for the Energy Saver group on System Preferences . Here, you can customize the screen turn off interval and when the Mac switches to Sleep mode arbitrarily.

Note that if you are using a MacBook, you need to set the screen turn off time and time the MacBook switches to sleep mode in both the battery mode and the power adapter.

Lock your Mac by keyboard shortcut

If you do not want to wait for your Mac to automatically switch to sleep mode, you can quickly lock it using a simple hotkey combination.

In case you are using a Mac and have only the Power button, just press Control + Shift + Power .

If you are using an older Mac and have an optical drive (also known as a CD / DVD drive), just press Control + Shift + Eject (push the CD / DVD drive out of the drive. Optical disk).

Just like that, your Mac will be locked instantly.

Lock the Mac from the touch screen

If you are using the latest version of the MacBook and have a TouchBar equipped, you can add a dedicated button for locking your Mac into it.

Open System Preferences , select Keyboard, and then click the Customize Control Strip button.

Next, you drag the Screen Lock button from the bottom row of the screen and drop it on the Touchbar. You can put this button into a group of four buttons always displayed on the Touchbar or put it in a group of hidden buttons. No matter where you put it, you can use it to lock your Mac.

Mac Lock uses Hot Corners

Hot Corners is one of the most popular or forgotten features of the user. It is simply a shortcut on the four corners of the screen. When needed, just drag the mouse to the corner you want and the function you have set up will automatically be activated without you having to click the mouse.

If you like this feature, you can use it to lock the screen. First, make sure your monitor is set up automatically when it's idle, as we mentioned above. Next, go to System Preferences > Mission Control and hit the Hot Corners button.

Here, you select any corner then click on the drop down menu and select Put Display to Sleep .

If you want to activate the screen saver instead of turning it off, just select Start Screen Saver from the popup menu.

Lock screen from Menu Bar

If you have set the system to lock automatically when it goes to Sleep mode, you may want to add a button to activate Sleep mode in the Menu Bar.

To do this, go to Applications> Utilities> Keychain Access . From the Keychain Access menu , choose Preferences.

In the Preferences window, check the Show keychain status in menu bar option.

In the Preferences window, check the Show keychain status in menu bar option.

Now, you will see a padlock icon appear on the menu bar. Click on it and you will see the option to lock your screen.