Stepping away from your Mac in a coworking space

In a coworking space, lock your Mac every time you stand up, even for a minute, and take it with you for anything longer than a coffee or a call in the phone booth. A lock stops people reading or typing into your Mac; it does nothing about someone carrying it off, and current MacBooks have no slot for a cable lock. The trick is a lock so quick you never skip it: a shortcut or hot corner to close it, Touch ID to open it, settings that lock the Mac when you forget, and for the many short breaks, a privacy screen such as Shoji.

Who is around your desk while you are gone

A coworking floor is not an office. The people at the next desk change from week to week, members bring visitors, and the path to the kitchen often runs right behind your chair. Many hot desks have a shared monitor, so your Mac may be driving a large screen that anyone walking past can read.

While you are away, four things can happen to an unattended Mac:

1. Someone reads what is on the screen: an email, a contract, a chat.
2. Someone types into it, from a prank message in your team chat to something worse.
3. Someone walks off with it.
4. Someone on the same Wi-Fi tries the sharing services your Mac has turned on.

A screen lock deals with the first two. The third is about taking the Mac with you. The fourth is a handful of settings you check once. The sections below take them in that order.

Set up the macOS lock on your first day

At a hot desk you will lock and unlock many times a day, usually with people passing, so set the lock up before you rely on it. How to lock a Mac screen instantly goes through every method; for a coworking desk, four settings matter most.

1. One way to lock that you will not skip. Control-Command-Q works from any app. If your hand is on the trackpad as you stand up, a hot corner is quicker: in System Settings, choose Desktop & Dock, click Hot Corners near the bottom and set a corner to Lock Screen.
2. Touch ID, so your password is not typed in an open room. In System Settings, under Touch ID & Password, turn on Touch ID for unlocking your Mac. Every return you unlock with a finger is one the person at the next desk cannot watch you type.
3. A lock for when you forget. In System Settings, open Lock Screen. Set “Require password after screen saver begins or display is turned off” to Immediately, and set the display to turn off after a few minutes of inactivity. A Mac you walk away from without locking then locks itself soon after.
4. Notification previews off. Under Notifications, set Show previews to Never. On a shared bench, banners get read while you are sitting right there, not only while you are away, and When Unlocked still shows them whenever the Mac is unlocked.

Settings to check once on shared Wi-Fi

These have nothing to do with the screen, and no lock covers them. Check them on your first day.

• AirDrop. Open Control Center and set AirDrop to Contacts Only, or turn receiving off, so strangers cannot send you files.
• Sharing. In System Settings, go to General, then Sharing, and turn off anything you do not use, such as File Sharing, Screen Sharing and Remote Login.
• Firewall. In System Settings, open Network, then Firewall, and turn it on.
• FileVault. Under Privacy & Security, make sure FileVault is on, so the disk cannot be read without your password if the Mac is taken.
• Find My. In System Settings, click your name at the top of the sidebar, then iCloud, and turn on Find My Mac, so a missing Mac can be located, locked or erased from another device.

Then the habit that matters more than any setting: for lunch, a meeting in another room, or anywhere you cannot see your desk from, take the Mac with you.

A quicker screen for the trips to the kitchen

At a hot desk, the macOS lock has a cost of its own. The displays go dark soon after you lock, and the desk’s monitor can then drop its connection and send your windows to the laptop screen, so a coffee can end with putting the desk back together (why that happens). A cost like that is how the quick trips go unlocked, and on a busy floor an unlocked Mac is a bigger risk than any weakness in the lock.

Shoji is made for those trips. Press Command-L and a screen slides shut over everything on every display, the hot desk’s monitor included. It does not sleep the displays or shuffle windows, and when you come back, Touch ID, or your Mac password checked by macOS, opens it with every window exactly where you left it. Music keeps playing and downloads keep going behind it.

Several of its details read like a list of coworking problems:

• Typing goes nowhere. While it is shut, the keyboard belongs to the lock, so nothing anyone types reaches your apps.
• Guesses are slowed and shown. Each wrong password makes the next try wait longer, and you see every failed try when you come back.
• New screens are covered. A monitor plugged in while it is locked is covered the moment it wakes.
• Quitting it does not open it. A guard runs beside it, and if anything closes Shoji while it is locked, even Force Quit, the guard turns on the macOS lock before the desktop can show.
• A note for whoever walks by. You can put a note on the lock, such as “Back at 3:30”, and show a clock.
• It locks when you forget. Away timers can blur the screen after a minute and lock it after five, or any timing you choose, and they wait while a video or a call keeps the display awake. A hot corner can lock or blur it too.

After an away time you choose, it also turns on the real macOS lock, so a break that runs long still ends at the full macOS lock screen. While you are at the desk, Focus Blur keeps only the window you are using sharp and softens everything else, and it was made for shared rooms like this one.

The limits matter more here than almost anywhere. Shoji covers the screen. It does not stop anyone taking the Mac, and it is not protection against network snooping, malware, cameras or other apps recording the screen. It asks for no Screen Recording, Accessibility or Full Disk Access permission, and it goes online only to activate the license and check for updates. It costs $14 once, is free for 24 hours, and runs on macOS 14 or later, on Apple silicon and Intel.

A routine for a coworking day

1. First day. Set up the hot corner, Touch ID and the lock delay, then check AirDrop, Sharing, the firewall and FileVault.
2. At the desk. Keep notification previews hidden, and use Focus Blur if people sit close.
3. Short breaks. Command-L or the hot corner, every time, even for a minute.
4. Longer breaks. Take the Mac. If you truly cannot, lock it with Control-Command-Q and keep the break short.
5. End of the day. Shut the Mac down or take it home. With FileVault on, a Mac that is shut down keeps its disk unreadable until someone signs in with your password.

Questions

Is it worth locking for a one-minute break? Yes. A minute is enough for someone to read an open email or send a message from your chat app. If locking feels like too much effort for a minute, make it quicker rather than skipping it.

Does a screen lock protect me from people on the same Wi-Fi? No. A screen lock covers the screen and the keyboard. What others on the network can reach depends on which sharing services are on and whether the firewall is on, and those are separate settings.

Does a lock cover the hot desk’s monitor as well? Yes. The macOS lock covers every connected display, and so does Shoji’s, which also covers a monitor plugged in while it is locked the moment that monitor wakes.