Open the ‘Security & Privacy’ preference pane and select the ‘General’ tab How to lock your Mac screen using Display Sleepįirstly, you will need to have your login password enabled for sleep and screen saver: Step 1 The easiest and quickest way to lock an OS X screen is to put the display to sleep, ensuring you have configured your Mac first to ask for a password after sleep or screen saver. While this may not prevent your Mac from being stolen or your data being erased, it can be a very quick and easy way to prevent unauthorised access to your user account and data. This can be a great security measure to compliment a secure user account password. Locking your Mac’s screen involves the OS X login window being displayed quickly without having to save and quit all documents and apps and fully log out of your user account before you can walk away from your computer. This time round I thought I’d revisit this feature and report back on my findings trying to lock the screen of a Mac running the recently released OS X El Capitan 10.11, since during OS X training courses I find that this is a very common question I am asked by students so I’ve written a blog showing you how to lock your computer screen instantly in OSX El Capitan.įirst of all, let’s explain what we mean by ‘locking the screen’. Back in June 2012, I blogged about ‘ How to Instantly Lock your Mac OS X Screen in Lion‘ and then in January 2014, I updated that blog for OS X Mavericks.

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