Screen Lock

[Praxxis]

Sun Solaris has a cool feature in the CDE window manager that allows you to lock your screen. Unlike typical screen savers, this does not blank the desktop or freeze the view. It basically locks down the keyboard and mouse, but leaves the screen alone. This would be a nice feature to have, so you could prevent people from accessing the system, but still view whatever you leave up, such as a system monitor. I have been looking for a utility like this for sometime for any OS, but so far I have only seen it in Solaris running CDE.

[Benad]

The screensavers can be "locked" with a password, and you can launch the screensaver by moving your cursor to one of the corners of the screen...

So... you can already "lock" your screen on 10.1. But I admit that a menu item like "lock" would be better than having to launch the screensaver.

- Benad

[Praxxis]

What I'm looking for is not a screen saver, but rather a tool that locks the workstations keyboard and mouse leaving the screen unaltered and continuing to display data.

[optimus]

Benad, drag this file to your dock to have one click access to turning on screensaver:

/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Versions/A/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app

- Optimus

[Benad]

optimus, that's a neat trick...

- Benad

[mervTormel]

lock out 3.1.2 for OS X released.

http://www.mauisoftware.com/

i haven't tried it but there was a blurb about displaying your desktop as the background, so that approximates the Sun Solaris feature.

if anybody kicks it around, let us know what your think.

i have low expectations.

[optimus]

I didnt try it either, but it seems to be independent of OSX's screen saver. It would be ideal to have a screen saver module that shows the screen as the screensaver.

Like Praxxis, I do monitoring all day with updating graphs, charts and tables, so this would be cool.

- Optimus

[xchanyazy]

I took one for the team, tried out lock out. It won't allow you to do what you're trying to do. I tried creating a blank(transparent background) image file as the image selection, but it only accepts .pict, which doesn't support transparancy. I also tried setting my background to be the transparent.tiff file, and then selecting that option, but it also didn't work. It just displayed a black screen.

The program does have some advantages over the built-in one, such as a panel where people can leave you messages while you are away, recordable alerts for entering the wrong password, and a logging feature with e-mail sending abilities.

I also tried inserting the transparent file into the screen saver modules, but apparently they put a black background behind the pictures, so it didn't do anything.

Just wondering... is Snapz Pro X scriptable? You may be able to set it up somehow that it takes a picture every x seconds and places it in the screen saver package. Hope you guys find something that will work for you, regardless.

[xchanyazy]

I asked some friends of mine what they thought, none of them had heard of a software solution. So, I thought up some hardware ones (not trying to be a smartass)...

1. Unplug your keyboard and mouse :D (ok, maybe I'm being a smartass here)
2. See if you can find a cheap switch that you can mount underneath your desk. Plug your keyboard/mouse into the "a" ports, nothing into the "b" ports. Then, when you want access, just hit the "a" switch, and when you leave your desk, hit the "b" switch.
3. Wireless keyboard/mouse; Throw them in a drawer (with a lock, preferably) when you aren't using it.
4. Find the power(or data)-carrying wire in the usb cord, and install a switch on it. I know this is possible on a ps2 mouse with just wire strippers and a switch, usb might be similar. You can get the switch at any hardware store in the electrical section (make sure you don't get a momentary on/off switch, as you don't want to hold down the button to be able to type). Put this in an out of sight place, and no one will suspect...

On the software side, I also thought of one thing that would at least disable the keyboard. You could edit the keymappings (directions (http://forums.osxhints.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=44)) of one of your unused keyboard sets (i.e. change all of the keys to null) and put it in your pulldown list. Then, switch to that using the mouse. Don't know of a way to disable the mouse of the top of my head, though. You could open up system prefs and put it to the slowest speed.. that would make me stop trying to mess with a computer, having to pick up the mouse and move it for every centimeter I move on the screen.

[eriklager]

Black Light includes a screensaver module that you can configure to show the screen as it is. You can download it from Versiontracker:
http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=10688&db=mac

When you have installed the screensaver module in ~/Library/Screen Savers, just press the configure button in screen saver preferences and disable all options. The screensaver will show the screen as it is but you won't be able to use the computer without entering your password (make sure you have chosen the option to "Use my user account password" in the activation pane of the screen saver preferences).

Combine this with the trick thar optimus posted (Drag this file to your dock to have one click access to turning on screensaver:
/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Versions/A/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app) and you will be able to lock your computer by clicking in the dock.

Erik

[Praxxis]

Big Thanks to Eriklager! This seems to have done the trick. So many times I have tried screen savers that claim to do this only to find that they are just displaying a static screenshot of the desktop. This app actually does what I want.

It still would be nice to see this functionality built in to the OS.

This is very nice.