How to Lock Your Mac When You Aren’t Around

Do you lock your Mac whenever you leave your desk? You might be thinking it’s not a big deal to let your System running, but leaving your computer unattended can cost you dearly. It is obvious that people may play pranks on you, whenever they have access to your phone or computer. Some of the things that can happen if you leave your System unlocked include not-so-nice mails or pictures that might get sent to your colleagues or worse still your boss! Or simply your wallpaper turning into something embarrassing.

It’s fun for others but it may become a bone of contention between the prankster and you. In more serious situations, say you are out for a cup of coffee with your colleague, and when you are back at your work station you notice, confidential documents and some other files are missing.

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According to various sources, more than 250 million confidential business records were reported lost and stolen between 2014-2015. Well it is easy to fix issues like this. All you need to do is get into the habit of locking your Mac. You can lock your computer with a keyboard shortcut or log out whenever you are away. You can unlock it with your password or fingerprints because prevention is better than cure. Let’s talk about the different ways to lock a Mac computer.

Mac allows you to establish a setting that automatically locks your computer. MacBook Pro (with a Touch bar) users can add a custom lock and take optimum utilization of technology to ensure your system will be locked in case you forget to do so.

How to lock your Mac with a keyboard shortcuts

We have two options to lock Mac:

1. Control + Shift + Eject: Using a keyboard shortcuts to lock your Mac is the fastest and easiest method to deter people from accessing your Mac computer. In order to lock your screen, simultaneously press the following keys: Control + Shift + Eject. If you face trouble in finding Eject key on the keyboard which is possible in ‘Retina MacBook Pro’, then ‘Power‘ can be used instead of Eject.

In this case, it will be: Control + Shift + Power. In both the scenarios, Mac’s display will shut off immediately. However, the system will keep on running in the background.

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2. Command + Shift + Eject: In this option your Mac will immediately go to sleep. This option makes the entire computer go to sleep, but always keep in mind to save all the important documents before putting the system into sleep mode and make sure nothing important is running in the background.

• Command + Shift + Power can be used instead of Eject key, as sometimes it may not be available in MacBook Air and MacBook Pro Retina.

Also Read: 7 Quick Tips to Improve MacBook’s Battery Life

Set a password lock

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In order to set a lock screen, first you need to go to the Apple icon, click on the “system preferences” then “security & privacy” after it opens the ‘general tab’, set a password if you haven’t. If you like to secure your computer with the top-level security, I will recommend to set it to ’immediately’ but you can also select preferred time interval. Select the time duration for how long you want the system to wait after sleep or to the screen saver to begins. Exit out from system preferences once you perform all the steps.

Also Read: How to Transfer iMessages to your new Mac

There, now you know how to keep your Mac safe!