The service you created should be near the bottom of the list of Services under the General disclosure triangle.ĭouble-click on the right side of the entry for the Service you created and assign a keyboard shortcut. Select the Keyboard Shortcuts tab at the top, then the Services group on the left. Next, open System Preferences and select the Keyboard preference pane.

Save the Service (Automator does not ask you where to save it, just to name it). Make sure that any application is selected in the second drop-down.Īdd the Start Screensaver action (in the Utilities group of actions) to the Service by dragging it to the right. At the top of the new Service's actions, in the Service receives drop-down, select no input from the options. Then, open Automator in the Applications folder, and select Service from the screen that appears. This hint details how to lock the screen from the keyboard by using Automator to build a Service in Snow Leopard.įirst, check the General tab on the Security System Preferences panel to ensure that the Require password after sleep or screen saver begins box is checked. The only real solution I've found is what the-sleepy-dog posted, namely to use Keychain Access to make a lock appear on the system menu bar, of which one of the options is 'Lock Screen'.When I step away from my Mac at work, I want a quick way to lock the screen, and hitting a hot-corner with the mouse is problematic for me. So whenever I use the Ctrl-Shift-Eject to 'lock the screen', it logs me out of the VPN, which I find highly irritating (logging in to a VPN is a time consuming process, given network latencies, and terrible interfaces, particularly coupled with large Enterprise wide VPNs that have a LOT of selections from an unsorted pick list for a Group Policy Selector - don't worry about it if you don't know what I'm talking about, but suffice it to say that logging in the VPN can be a minute+ long affair). If that VPN software isn't amenable to switching users without invalidating the VPN connection (which makes sense from a security standpoint), then, it will log you out of the VPN. The problem arises if you are also using that machine to connect via a VPN to some corporate/enterprise infrastructure. However, on a corporate/enterprise machine, you will have multiple accounts (usually, your account, an 'admin' rights like account, and the 'corporate admin' like account). Normally, this isn't a problem, as it has the same behavior as just locking the computer. If you have multiple accounts on the computer, you will see those appear.

Ctrl-Shift-Eject really brings up the 'login' screen. Locking your computer is an ancillary benefit to what it's really doing. For completeness sake, Ctrl-Shift-Eject does more than just lock your computer.

Mac screen lock shortcut