Windows-L Lives! (Mac Version)

Where have you been all my (mac) life, LockTight? One of the couple features I’d been missing from Windows since switching to Mac has finally been addressed. I always used the Windows-L hotkey to lock my machine when I walked away from the keyboard; a habit I picked up in my days at Microsoft.

Given the wrist problems I had from keyboard and mouse use, I try to be as keyboard centric as I can. Thus I need a key combo to lock my PC so I don’t have to mouse over to do it. Mac OSX doesn’t have a hotkey to lock your computer or switch it to the login screen. There’s no way even to set one yourself via the normal OS.

Along comes LockTight. This preference pane add-on is single-mindedly focused on serving that one purpose and nothing else. The only bummer about it is that it requires you to hit two modifier keys (Option, Command/Flower, Ctrl, Shift) along with an alphanumeric key. You can’t just remap Flower-L to be lock.

I’ll live with having to retrain to Flower-Shift-L; at least I can do it from the keyboard again.

(Thanks to Lifehacker for the reference)

~ by bryans on February 7, 2009.