Mac 101: Locking your Mac with a hotkey, like you can with Windows

Even easier is you turn on require password after sleep or screen saver then enable a hot corner to turn on the screen saver then just drop your mouse in the corner when you walk away.

1. My Keychain Access.app has no menu option for Lock Screen.
2. Because no one else mentioned it, hold down Shift (for example) when creating the hot corner for the screensaver. Now to activate, you have to hold down Shift and hit the corner with the mouse.

Seriously, holding down Shift and flicking your wrist is really harder than the Windows key strokes?

Ok, you want the login screen. Well, several commenters mentioned how to do that with utilities and a single keystroke. If you're really an IT person, I can't imagine you're using a Mac without Quicksilver, Butler, Sparks, or one of the many other programs similar to those. It seems as though you're just griping because it's different.

If you want a somewhat native solution, open Script Editor.app, enter the following (below) and Save As... "Lock Screen" Type:Application. Now you can activate Spotlight: Cmd-Space, type Lock, and hit Enter.

... stolen from http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20031102031045417 ...
do shell script "/System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/User.menu/Contents/Resources/CGSession -suspend"

I think it's usually beneficial if commenters read all posted comments before replying to a posting... otherwise we end up with 10 of the same comments as above.

In response to Joshua Meadows - Macs and PC's are different. Like boys and girls. They're anatomies are different. Playing a secondary machine's sounds through a primary machine's speakers is not exactly a commonly requested function... Apple focuses their development efforts on features that we all actually take advantage of, like system stability...

I believe Keychain's menubar option for "Lock Screen," the password dialogue following wake from sleep or screensaver, and the Fast User switching option all have the same function and security.

I like this app's purpose - allowing users to easily lock their computer when they run down the hall for a minute is quite helpful. Thanks Jason for a great post.

You can also setup hot corners (in 10.5) + screensaver locking and then simply swipe your mouse to that corner to lock your system.

I've been using Butler to accomplish this. I've got it set so I hit ctrl-option-L and it swings around to the login screen. works great for me.

Thanks for the info! Considering the 13" MBP and It'll be my first mac.

Been wondering about things like this and other differences in OS X compared to Windows.

I will be using this.

NONE of the alternatives including:

-Exposé
-Sleep Mode (totally useless if you want to leave something like MSN running while you're out of the room)
-Screen Saver passwords
-The dashboard widget I have (which is actually the best I've used)

can come close to matching Windows Key and L

There is a hotkey: simply hold down the Option and Command keys and press the Eject key. This immediately puts your Mac to sleep (with Leopard at least). If you require a password to wake from sleep, then you have your hotkey lockdown.

If you'd rather just turn the screen off rather than putting the whole machine to sleep just use Mac OS X's built in hotkey combo:

Control - Shift - Eject

Can't other admins unlock a Windows box as well? If so, where does it put them - back at the original user's Desktop? If not, well then that would be silly wouldn't it?