5 ways to lock your Mac remotely

The further Apple's products evolve, the stronger the integration between them. If before the ecosystem was a huge advantage, now that competitors have pulled themselves together, it is time to open up new possibilities for the interaction of devices with each other. Handoff and Continuity pioneered this kind of gadget bundle. But they do not solve one of the most demanded (and even more than that, obvious) problems: integration at the level of controlling the blocking of one device with the help of another. Is there a way out of this situation?

It would seem that with the advent of the fingerprint sensor on our smartphones, it would be absolutely logical to make it possible to control the Mac using the iPhone. Touched the sensor - unlocked the Mac, moved 5 meters away - automatically blocked it, or vice versa. But in Cupertino, apparently, they believe that the time has not yet come. But third-party developers think differently, so from time to time new apps appear in the App Store that allow you to remotely lock and unlock your Mac.

FingerKey

The first app to hit the App Store allows you to remotely lock and unlock your computer. At one time, after the release, for unknown reasons, it was removed from the app store, so it did not receive proper distribution. It worked quite well, however.

The essence was simple (like all analogues): a small client for OS X and an application with a widget were installed on iOS. In the application settings, a Mac-iPhone pair was created and a separate widget was added to the latter. If you wanted to unlock your computer, all you had to do was swipe the shutter on your smartphone, select the appropriate widget and confirm your selection with your fingerprint. Quite a working option, albeit somewhat inconvenient (after all, clicking on the widget provoked the opening of a full-fledged application, which subsequently had to be closed).

The application was returned to the App Store, so those who have not yet had time to get acquainted with it can do it now.

MacID

A worthy competitor to the previous application. The principle of configuration and operation is also simple: the client is installed on OS X, the application is on iOS and connected to each other. Further, using the widget, the computer itself is locked or unlocked. Everything is done by analogy with FingerKey. It also works pretty well, by the way. Both applications very rarely have problems with the fact that one device cannot find another.

But the main difference between MacID and its predecessor is the adequate (perhaps this is the right word) work with several computers running OS X. If you have several different Macs at home, you can install a MacID client on each of them and bind them all to your iPhone. FingerKey has similar functionality, but, alas, I did not manage to get it to work correctly.

KeyTouch

A budget analogue of the first application on our list. Unfortunately, the budget makes itself felt very often: far from ideal work of the application in terms of not only pairing devices with each other, but also incomprehensible problems even with compatible models of computers running OS X.

But if you are lucky, and your computer and smartphone models become friends with each other, there will be much less problems. At peril and risk, as they say.

Tether

A somewhat differently organized process is offered by the Tether app. In it, the developers decided not to hang unnecessary actions on the user at all, but to entrust all the work to their own program. You still install clients on OS X and iOS, you also connect them to each other, but then the application will do everything for you. As soon as you move 10-12 meters away from your computer (get out of Bluetooth range), your Mac will automatically lock itself. Come back - the opposite action will occur (however, you can turn it off and enter the password yourself each time).

The main disadvantage is very unstable work. Devices are constantly losing each other, which becomes annoying. This is treated by turning off and on Bluetooth normally. But you must admit that this is not why we are choosing this kind of application. Apparently, for such an unstable version, the developers were ashamed to take money from users, so Tether is absolutely free. Let's hope that things change for the better in future releases.

Knock

An interesting idea from the guys at Knock Software. In order to unlock your Mac, you need to knock (literally) on your smartphone. The configuration process is similar to the applications described above: two clients, setting up communication between them. You can read a more detailed review on our website.

In my opinion, the apps from this list that are currently available in the App Store are the most interesting. Although no one excludes the possibility of the appearance of not only new software developments, but also various key chains. What would you prefer? Share the comments below!