Every new Mac convert who came from a windows environment at office wishes for a lock screen. It’s mostly second nature to press the Windows+L keys and leave for a coffee break at office. Macs these days don’t explicity offer an option to lock the screen to users. The sleep option is quite handy but is not the same as a Lock Screen. I seriously wish that my mac streams music to my Denon while the mac is locked which is not possible when you put the mac to a sleep.
The lack of lock screen functionality has been bothering me for a while now. I finally decided enough is enough and sat down to figure out how to Lock the Screen on a mac. Google shows up quite a variety of ways on how one can go locking their mac. So here is a comprehensive list of how the Lock Screen can be evoked.
1) The simplest and easiest way to lock the screen is press Control + Shift + Eject/Power key to Lock the screen. Please do make sure that the security settings of your mac requires you to enter a password after Sleep or Screensaver.
2) Using Alfred app or the Launch Bar app just type lock screen into these app and Bam screen gets locked with a nice animation. You can even create a keyboard shortcut to trigger the lock screen once you have either of these apps.
3) Open the Keychain Acess app and under preferences select the “Show the keychain status in menubar” option. This will show a nice lock icon in the Menubar on which you can click and lock the screen.
If you do have know of other options to trigger the lock screen on a mac, please do let me know, I would love to add them to the list.