Stacking Code

When I got my first Mac, a MacBook Air, I typically used it either on its own, or hooked up to a Thunderbolt display with an extended USB keyboard and a Magic Mouse. In either scenario I needed a way to quickly lock it when I walked away from it. The cumulative wisdom on the web indicated putting the machine to sleep was the easiest approach, with the system preferences set to require a password on waking. How to quickly get the Mac to sleep then?

One suggestion was to simply close the lid, but that doesn't work with a Thunderbolt display attached. Another was to use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Shift-Eject, but the MacBook Air doesn't have an Eject key, and the alternative Ctrl-Shift-Power didn't exist or wasn't well known at the time. Another suggestion was to bind a five finger gesture to sleep, something that might be awkward with a Magic Mouse and would require a third-party app anyway. Another was to use an active corner, but that could cause problems when running Windows 8 in a virtual machine (an OS with a fixation on corners).

The simplest suggestion I could find, and the one I ultimately went with, was to use the screen saver instead of sleep. It too can require a password on exit and is relatively easy to bind to a terminal shortcut. Here's how.

1. Edit your .bash_profile by typing vim ~/.bash_profile in the terminal.
2. Add alias ss="/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine" to the bottom of the file (its Vim, so hit G to get to the bottom, o to create a new line, type the line above, then hit Escape).
3. Type :wq to write the file and quit.

Now when I want to walk away from my Mac, regardless of the peripherals attached, I tab into terminal and type ss and Enter. Instant screen saver, followed by sleep ten minutes later. Exiting either mode requires a password, and that works for me.