Locking the screen via keyboard shortcut on MacBooks without Eject Button

Just to add to the conversation, there is a way to use the Automator to enable a screen lock with a hotkey. Is this a ridiculous rigmarole? Yes. However, if you're willing to put in a little extra work, I did find this tutorial to be clear and easy to follow.

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20050706194219822

On MacbookPro with Touch Bar you can do:

System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Customize Control Strip... -> Move Lock "Screen Lock" onto Control Strip

That's it!

Now you should have a Screen Lock icon on your Touch Bar and can lock the notebook with one touch.

Here's an article that describe one line above in 5 paragraphs and 4 pictures 🙂

Thats just what I was looking for. Thanks Evil Rob!

it only turns off my screen but dont lock it. 😟

Yes, but if you have System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General > Required password > Immediately set, you will need a password each and every time, you try to wake the screen.

An old thread but yet again we have a workaround rather than a solution. Locking a screen on demand is a pretty natural thing to want to do without wanting it to lock automatically. Sometimes I want to be able to not have to unlock if I'm idle 5 minutes, but want the option to lock it immediately if I'm walking away for a minute.

Putting it to sleep is not an acceptable alternative.

OSX would be a lot better if Apple stopped telling us how to use a computer. Like closing the lid and not having the machine sleep on you. On Windows it's an option in a dropdown. On Mac, it requires installing a third party.

I totally agree. APPLE PLEASE READ THE ABOVE YES I'M SHOUTING. Thanks.

This isn't from a keyboard shortcut, but this adds a small icon to the system menu bar.

Launch Keychain Access and go to Preferences. In the General tab, check the box for “Show keychain status in menu bar.” This will add a padlock icon to your system’s menu bar.

http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/how_to_quickly_lock_your_screen_in_mac_os _x

+1 here. I think apple doesn't care for business customers at all. Such features are not so useful at home but in a office environment it's a must have feature. I really like the user experience provided by Mac's and find it really pleasant to work with. But as stated above, they should LISTEN to their customers and not try to change the way how their customers use the computer.

Totally frustrating with the lack of such obvious things that are present in Windows since the 90's.

Thanks that is really helpful. While I was also looking for a keyboard shortcut, this is a good workaround for now

cheers!

great! thanks

Go to System Preferences -> Desktop and Screen Saver, then select the Hot Corners button in the lower right corner and pick a corner to "Put Display to Sleep". It goes to sleep right away.

Now if you set the delay in Security and Privacy to say, 5 seconds, you will have enough time to come out of the sleep corner before it locks while still locking the screen before you can really get out of the area and some other miscreant hops in and invades your computer.

I am a Novell/Windows Network Engineer who has been using Windows and Macs since 1987. If you want to talk about an OS vendor forcing you to work the way they want you to, just look at Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, Windows 10, etc. They want you to use your computer the way you use your Android.

I love you man 😍

For completeness sake, Ctrl-Shift-Eject does more than just lock your computer. Locking your computer is an ancillary benefit to what it's really doing. Ctrl-Shift-Eject really brings up the "login" screen. If you have multiple accounts on the computer, you will see those appear. Normally, this isn't a problem, as it has the same behavior as just locking the computer.

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). The problem arises if you are also using that machine to connect via a VPN to some corporate/enterprise infrastructure. 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. 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).

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".

Sleepy-Dog, great tip and very useful - many thanks.