Big Sur “sleep” does not lock screen (when slept via keyboard shortcut)

big surscreen-lockSecuritysleep-wake

EDIT: corrected keyboard shortcut to say ⏻ rather than ⏏

I put my computer to sleep using cmd+opt+ whenever I leave my desk.
For years, this has reliably locked the screen of the computer.

But ever since I upgraded to macOS 11 Big Sur: sleeping the computer does not lock the screen. I return to my computer later (minutes or hours), wake it up with the keyboard, and find that the computer is ready-to-use; no lock screen is presented.

Specifically, sleeping via keyboard shortcut does not lock it. Whereas sleeping by selecting "Sleep" with the mouse in the Apple menu seems to work.

My settings are the same as always:

Require password immediately after sleep begins

I'm using a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15" Mid-2014) on 11.1 Big Sur.

I have all the latest updates:

enter image description here

Is anybody else experiencing this? For my part, this is a security regression that has reduced my trust in macOS.

Best Answer

Maybe the settings got corrupted when upgrading to Big Sur.

  • Open System Preferences -> Security & Privacy
  • In the General tab, disable/untick "Require password after sleep"
  • Quit System Preferences to have the changed settings written to disk
  • Open the same panel again and enable the setting
  • Quit System Preferences (and hope for the best)
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