Back to School Tip: Require Password to Wake from Sleep

Posted by Jacob Schulman on 09/4/08 in Apple, Featured, Tips & Tricks

For all the Mac-carrying students who are either already back at school or very close to heading back, here’s a nice little tip that can come in handy. For anyone worried about prying eyes or simply worried about people poking around in their machines, there’s an easy and quick way to make that less easy to do.

By heading over to the Security preference pane in the System Preferences app, there’s an option to “Require password to wake this computer from sleep or screen saver”. When this is checked, you’ll be prompted to enter your password every time you wake from sleep or try to return to the main screen after the screen saver has been active.

For an even quicker way, you can head over to the Expose & Spaces preference pane and enable a hot corner for the screen saver. I currently have one set up for the upper right hand corner, as I don’t really ever click on the Spotlight icon and instead just use a keyboard shortcut for whenever I need to quick search for something.

An additional layer of security can be easily added. You can choose to disable the Automatic Login feature of OS X that allows you to bypass the main login window and go directly to the selected user’s desktop. While this feature is especially handy when you’re at home and don’t have to worry about anyone messing around on your machine (hopefully), it can be a major vulnerability when you’re away at school. I know that I didn’t want my roommates to be able to get into my computer, and this was a simple little way to ensure that my stuff was secure.

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rampancy said on

September 4th, 2008 at 11:29 am

It’s hardly a bullet proof security solution; it certainly doesn’t preclude people doing a force restart on your Mac to bypass it if you’ve set your Mac to automatically log you in to your account (or “hacking” their way in through other means). However, for roommates who aren’t Mac-savvy or even tech-savvy, it’s a good thing to do if you’re leaving your Mac unattended for brief moments.

What I generally do though is quickly invoke the login screen through Fast User Switching with a utility like MacLoc (http://ourapples.com/downloads)

James said on

September 14th, 2008 at 2:09 pm

These things are minor security enhancements. Anyone with any Mac knowledge at all can get by these. But at least they deter the snoopy co-worker, classmate, roommate, etc. I mean, if you leave your Mac sitting around unattended long enough for somebody to bypass these minor deterrents then you probably deserve to have the whole laptop stolen!