How to make MacBook require password after closing lid but NOT after sleep/screensaver?
You'll need to run a command that locks the Mac when the lid is closed that means when Mac goes to sleep, the command that needs to execute every time the Mac goes to sleep is:
/System/Library/CoreServices/Menu\ Extras/User.menu/Contents/Resources/CGSession -suspend
To run a command when the Mac goes to sleep you can use Sleepwatcher you have at least two options to install it:
- Downloading the files from the URL above and follow the instructions on ReadMe.rtf
- Installing a package manager like brew and after install it running
brew install sleepwatcher
, if you are familiar with some linux flavor then this is like the package managerapt-get
for Ubuntu ordnf
for Fedora and so on.
After installing sleepwatcher
you'll need to decide if you want to run it like a daemon or by command line:
-
Running by command line:
/usr/local/opt/sleepwatcher/sbin/sleepwatcher -s "/System/Library/CoreServices/Menu\ Extras/User.menu/Contents/Resources/CGSession -suspend" &
Maybe you'll need to change the path to
sleepwatcher
Parameter
-s
, taken from man page:Execute sleepcommand when the Mac is put to sleep mode. sleepcommand must not take longer than 15 seconds because after this timeout the sleep mode is forced by the system.
The command needs to be between quotation marks
With this option you'll need to run
sleepwatcher
manually on every logoff, restart or shutdown. -
If you decide to run
sleepwatcher
as a daemon, then you'll need to create or modify (in case you download the program from the web) aplist
file that works as a configuration file to start a daemon, the plist file that I modify looks like:<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"> <plist version="1.0"> <dict> <key>Label</key> <string>de.bernhard-baehr.sleepwatcher</string> <key>ProgramArguments</key> <array> <string>/usr/local/opt/sleepwatcher/sbin/sleepwatcher</string> <string>-V</string> <string>-s /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu\ Extras/User.menu/Contents/Resources/CGSession -suspend</string> </array> <key>RunAtLoad</key> <true/> <key>KeepAlive</key> <true/> </dict> </plist>
To start the
sleepwatcher
as a daemon you'll need to run the following command:launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/de.bernhard-baehr.sleepwatcher-ybr-localuser.plist
You'll need to change the path to the
plist
file, the location of this file should be at:/Library/LaunchDaemons
or
~/Library/LaunchAgents
The first path is to run
sleepwatcher
for all users, the second path is to run per user.With this option
sleepwatcher
starts and stops automatically on every logoff, restart or shutdown.