Airlock Review: Magically Lock your Mac with your iPhone

Wouldn’t it be nice if you never had to type in your password, but your Mac was still locked up so people couldn’t access it? That’s just what Airlock, from The M.H.A. is for. Airlock is a new Mac application that locks your computer when you walk away from it, and unlocks it when you come back. It does this by scanning for nearby bluetooth devices, and it unlocks your Mac when it detects your iPhone (or iPod Touch) in range.

Airlock is very easy to set up, you just need to turn bluetooth on on your iPhone and follow the directions on your Mac. Once you select your device, you can change some preferences to make sure Airlock works just how you want it to. First, you can change the range of Airlock. This is done with a nice little radar. A little blip on the radar shows your device, and you can drag the “activation range” slider to make the activation area on the radar bigger, or smaller.

Airlock has some more advanced features too. You can have Airlock automatically launch items when you come into range, or leave range, of your computer. Airlock can also increase the rate in which it scans for a device. This can decrease the battery of your iPhone or iPod if you set it very high, but it will also make your screen lock, and unlock, quicker. If you do not have your iPhone with you, you can click the small lock in the corner of the lock screen to type in your password. When you do this Airlock will be deactivated until it detects your device again. Currently Airlock only works with an iPhone or an iPod Touch, but they plan on adding support for almost any bluetooth device in the future.

Airlock does come with a few issues. If you want to save your battery, and you lower the responsiveness of the app, it will take a longer time to lock or unlock your computer. This is where the manual unlock tool comes in useful, but it still might be frustrating for some users. If you do not make the activation range large enough, you might suddenly get locked out, even if your device is near your computer. Be sure to try out the demo of Airlock first, because the developer does report that some users with bluetooth mice and keyboards are having issues. They are currently working on a fix for this.

Airlock is an interesting application. It does have a few issues, but it’s a cool app that I think everyone with an iPhone or iPod Touch should try out. A trial is available and you can purchase Airlock for $7.77 on it’s website.

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