Sep 04, '09 07:30:00AM • Contributed by: MacTipper
One of the new features in Snow Leopard is that you can set a delay before the password is activated for your screensaver/wake from sleep. This is helpful because I had my password disabled previously, since I didn't want to enter it in all the time. However, the only options for the delay are: Immediately, 5 Seconds, 1 Minute, 5 Minutes, 15 Minutes, 1 Hour, 4 Hours.
For me, 15 minutes is too short and 1 hour is too long: I want 30 minutes. Fortunately, there is a way around this -- a simple Terminal command. The Terminal command is:
defaults -currentHost write com.apple.screensaver askForPasswordDelay -int 1800
To set it to however long you like, edit the last item (1800, which is 30 minutes * 60 seconds/minute) to the desired delay in seconds. Copy and paste the command into Terminal, change the time limit, and hit Return. Now, all you have to do is log out and back in again and you're good to go!
Note that this hint originally appeared here.
