@home is a tiny convenience utility, that knows when you are at home (based on your wireless network name) and prevents your computer from locking the screen. When you are away from home, your normal locking idle times apply.
I wanted something that automatically decides to either allow locking or disallow it without manual user interaction. Other tools have slightly different goals, but they need to be triggered manually.
No, @home simply uses your wireless network name to detect whether you are at home or not.
For security reasons you can set a very low value for "Display Sleep", such as 5 minutes. At home you'll not be bothered to type your password over and over again. However, if you take your laptop out, you'll have the confidence that if you forget to lock it (e.g. in the office) it will lock itself after maximum 5 minutes.
The same applies as with the Energy Settings: you can set a very low idle time for the screensaver to kick in. @home makes sure that you don't have to login again. As soon as you take your laptop to work, it will respect your default screensaver idle time setting.
In System Preferences under "Security & Privacy" you need to tick the option "Require password immediately after sleep or screen saver begins".
It takes a few seconds until @home is notified about a change in power availability.
Yes! Go to System Preferences, Users & Groups, Login Items and hit the + button. Then select the @home app (in /Applications/) and press Add.
@home does not send, nor receive any data over network connections. In fact, you can use it completely offline. The only reading it conducts is the name of the currently associated wireless network, to save you some typing.
I like to have short lock times on my portables, for the rare case that I forget to manually lock my device when I'm out. At home it's rather a nuisance to retype my password over and over again. As long as I lock my apartment, I can be sure that no one will tamper with my portables. @home ensures that I am secure while on the road and at the same time enjoy more convenience at home.
A Mac portable with macOS 10.10 (Yosemite) or newer.
Reach out to me on beatrupp at gmail dot com
What are others saying about @home?
Version 1.3.0, Dec 6 2018
- Support macOS Mojave and Dark Mode.
Version 1.2.1, Dec 16 2016
- Option to activate @home only when plugged in
- Nicer icons, now supporting Retina displays
Version 1.1.0, Nov 12 2016
- @home is now only active when you are connected to power (this prevents draining your battery)
- Conveniently detect the name of the network you are connected to
Version 1.0.2, Nov 1 2016
Initial version
