Change Mac Screensaver Password Delay – How to Change ‘Ask for Password After Screensaver’ Delay on Mac

applescriptbashmacosx-snow-leopard

How can I change my Mac OS X Snow Leopard "Ask for password after screensaver" delay?

I've tried:

defaults -currentHost write com.apple.screensaver askForPasswordDelay -int 3600

but won't work. I want to do this through Terminal or AppleScript.

Best Answer

defaults write com.apple.screensaver askForPasswordDelay -int 3600

Works for me -- it'll show up as "1 hour" in the preference pane, while 14400 will be "4 hours". You need to consider that the selection in System Preferences uses hard-coded selection values, and always uses the next higher value: 61 seconds will show as 5 minutes.

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Macos – Lock Mac after N mins of inactivity

Use display sleep to save your screen; use the screen saver as a lock.

Let’s say you want to prevent burn-in after 3 minutes and lock the computer after 30 minutes.

Go to System Preferences > Energy Saver and set the display sleep time to 3 minutes.
Go to System Preferences > Desktop & Screen Saver and pick a lightweight screen saver (like Flurry). Set it to start after 30 minutes.
Go to System Preferences > Security and make sure “Require password to wake this computer from sleep or screen saver” is turned on.

Result:

After 3 minutes your screen goes blank, preventing burn-in, but the computer is not locked.
After 30 minutes the screen saver kicks in (although you won’t be able to see it because your screen is blanked) and your computer is locked.

Mac – How to reuse backup on Time Machine on Snow Leopard after a logic board change, after choosing wrong option on popup

Since Lion you can use tmutil:

sudo tmutil inheritbackup /Volumes/DISKNAME/Backups.backupdb/COMPUTERNAME

Best Answer

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Macos – Lock Mac after N mins of inactivity

Mac – How to reuse backup on Time Machine on Snow Leopard after a logic board change, after choosing wrong option on popup

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