Lock screen in OSX while saving energy

Posted by Jorge Bernal July 14, 2009

UPDATE: It seems it’s not working on snow leopard so I uploaded a new version:

BlankIt.saver-snowleopard.zip (6.0 KiB, 24 hits)

One of the things I miss most is a way to lock the screen in OSX. There are some ways, but they all come to the same idea: “require password to wake up form sleep or screen saver” and then sleep or start screen saver.

There are some times when I don’t want my computer to sleep, but still want it locked: I’ll be away but…

…downloading/installing something
…want remote access
…you name it

The problem with screen savers in mac is that there is no blank screen saver. They’re all beautiful OpenGL savers that look really nice (even when nobody is looking at them), but consume CPU and I usually found my laptop hot as hell when I come back.

It turns out that creating a blank screen saver is way easier than I thought.

Open Xcode
New Project -> Standard Apple Plug-In -> Screen Saver
Build it
Install it

The base template for a screen saver in Xcode is just that. A blank view. It’s not so efficient as putting the display to sleep, but it’s a start.
If you don’t have Xcode and/or don’t want to waste a couple minutes following the steps, you can download it:

BlankIt.zip (4.6 KiB, 22 hits)

I’m not uploading the source, since the only change from the template was to change the update interval from 1/30 of a second to 10 seconds.

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