MacOS – How to lock the mouse and keyboard but see the screen

macosscreensaver

Our team has a small Mac that we use to display an auto-refreshed web page, but it requires an authenticated user be logged into it.

So the question: how can we show the browser, but have the keyboard and mouse locked from any unauthorized access? Password unlock would be best, but forced log-out might be okay.

As a secondary question: if the current user were on vacation that day, how could another user log into the machine?

[Edit]

The machine will also be used for other things several per week: video conferencing, watching the occasional YouTube video, etc.

It's important that the keyboard and mouse can be used when the machine is "unlocked", and highly desirable that the unlocking can be done quickly (<30 seconds)

Best Answer

Just remove keyboard and mouse altogether and manage the Mac remotely with VNC.

EDIT to remove USB support: You can remove USB support in Terminal with the following commands:

cd /System/Library/Extensions

TO BE SAFE do this code first: 

sudo cp -r IOUSBFamily.kext /Users/<youraccount>/Desktop

Then

sudo rm -r IOUSBFamily.kext

Reboot and USB support is gone. Be sure you have a good VNC or ssh connection first so you can put that .kext file back when you want to be able to use the USB ports again.

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