Sleep displays with password protection

Jul 29, '09 07:30:03AM

Contributed by: flammable

The following hint is useful to me because I use my iMac in my bedroom, and I don't shut it down or put it to sleep. I prefer to sleep in the dark. Additionally, I don't want people hopping on my computer and changing my stuff - so I need the password protection a screen saver provides.

Since 10.5 was released, my workaround has been to set Energy Saver to sleep the display after a certain amount of minutes, and set a screen saver to start one minute after the display sleeps. It didn't always work, unfortunately.

Here's my new solution. For this to work properly, you're going to need to have either a hot corner set up to activate the screen saver, or have the screen saver set to a timer. It's a good idea to disable Energy Saver's display sleep. Then, download and install Sleep Display and ScriptSaver.

First, write yourself an AppleScript that contains this one line:

do shell script "open -a SleepDisplay"
Save it somewhere safe. I made a folder called ScriptSaver Scripts in ~/Library/Application Support/.

Then, open System Preferences, then click Desktop & Screen Saver. Click the Screen Saver tab, then select the new ScriptSaver item. Click the Options button, and leave everything at the defaults, and select your script as the Activation Script. Click OK.

That's it. When your screen saver is activated, the display will shut off. I've tested this with an iMac (Mid 2007) and a Mac Mini (Early 2009), both running 10.5, and it worked great.

If you're running 10.4, you can probably substitute SleepDisplay with Sleep Display (a completely different application that works only with 10.4).

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