How to Lock your Mac Screen with an iPhone.
While the Apple Watch does allow you to unlock your Mac without entering a password, you can’t remotely lock your Mac. One way to solve this problem is to use third party applications such as MacID and NearLock. But if you’re looking for your own way to lock your Mac remotely with an iPhone, you can use apps like Shortcutify. It uses Siri shortcuts to customize everything, so you can ask Siri on iPhone to lock and unlock your Mac. Before we get started, there are a few steps to go through to get everything set up, but it only takes a few minutes and I’ll keep the description as detailed as possible.
How to lock Mac screen on iPhone
Step 1. Install Shortcutify on your iPhone.
Install Shortcutify app on your iPhone first. Also, make sure you have the latest version of iOS and have the Shortcuts app installed on your iPhone. Once you have the apps installed and ready, open Shortcutify.
Step 2. Find the local IP address of your Mac
This method only works with local Wi-Fi, so make sure your Mac is connected to Wi-Fi. If you don’t know the IP address of your Mac, go to System Preferences Network Your IP Address. Make a note of the IP address, we will need it later.
If you need help figuring out your IP address, you can check out this guide here.
Step 3. Enable remote login on your Mac
Since the shortcut will essentially log in to your computer remotely, you first need to enable the remote login feature on your Mac. To do this, go to System Preferences Sharing Enable Remote Login.
Step 4. Install Shortcutify app
Now open the Shortcutify app on your iPhone and tap the Mac option, it will ask you to enter your Mac’s IP address and login credentials. Enter the details correctly and continue.
After that, we need to turn on the accessibility preferences on the Mac by clicking the “Accessibility” button in the app on your iPhone.
It should bring up a dialog box on your Mac. Just go to System Preferences Security & Privacy Privacy Accessibility enable “sshd-keygen-wrapper”.
Click Lock to lock the changes.
Step 5. Customize shortcuts
You can do a lot of things with this app, such as taking screenshots, switching apps, and typing keystrokes. However, we will focus on locking the Mac. Open the Shortcuts app and click the + button in the upper right corner to create a new shortcut and click Add Action.
Find macOS: Lock the screen in the search bar and tap an action to add it to a shortcut. Click Next to go to the next page.
Give the shortcut a name and you’re done. I named my shortcut “lock my Mac” and every time I run this shortcut it locks my Mac. You can even ask Siri to do it for you.
Unlock your Mac with iPhone
If you want to set up a Siri shortcut to unlock your Mac using your iPhone, it’s just as easy. You just need to create another shortcut and add macOS action to it: “Wake up and sign in”. This will require your password, so add it to the textbox and save the shortcut. You can unlock your Mac simply by clicking the shortcut or asking Siri to launch the unlock shortcut.
Closing words
It was a quick way to set your iPhone to unlock and lock your Mac with a simple command. I agree that it has a few steps, but it’s a one-off process and you will definitely love it. Let me know if you have any problems with setup.
READ ALSO: 6 Best Siri Shortcut Apps for Power Users