For macOS
One job, done quietly. Your Watch is the key — while it is on your wrist and near the Mac, nothing happens.
One wedge, filling as you get closer. Glance at it and you know whether the Mac is watching, counting down, or already locked.
The wedge shows how close you are to the lock point, with an optional percentage underneath it. No Dock icon, no window in the way.
With most Watches it reads whether yours is actually on your wrist, so one left on the desk or the charger does not count as you being there. Settings › Watch says whether yours reports it.
It never locks while you are typing or moving the mouse, a momentary signal blip is ignored, and nothing can lock in the seconds after you unlock.
Walk away
When the signal stays weak for the whole delay — or disappears altogether — the wedge begins to blink and a notification appears with the seconds ticking down. A momentary blip is not enough. If you are only stretching your legs, Not now holds it off.
Come back and unlock exactly as you always do, with Touch ID or your password.
On your wrist
Wrist detection reads the status the Watch already sends out, so taking it off locks the Mac too — same delay, same warning. If you would rather it simply paused instead, that is a setting.
Most Apple Watch models report their wrist state. Some do not — Apple Watch SE (2nd generation) is one — and with those the app works on signal strength alone.
A Watch it has never seen nearby, Bluetooth off, or a Watch off your wrist — it waits rather than guessing. But a signal that vanishes while it is watching you counts as walking away, and it locks.
Set up in a minute
Choose your Watch, press Calibrate, then move around your desk as you normally would for a minute or two. That teaches it what being at the Mac looks like for you — your room, your body, your chair.
It works best when your Watch and your Mac use the same Apple Account — the Watch appears by name and everything just works. A Watch on another Apple Account (a personal Watch on a work Mac, say) can be added instead by holding it against the Mac once; the app then follows it by its signal. That works well in quieter surroundings but may not in every environment, so test it for a few days before relying on it — and if you keep being asked to find the Watch again, use a Watch on the Mac’s own Apple Account.
Leave Test mode on for the first day. It does everything except actually lock, and the log shows what it would have done, so you can be sure before you trust it.
The glyph is monochrome by design so it sits quietly beside everything else in the menu bar.
Auto-lock is on, and the wedge shows how close you are to the lock point.
Blinking, with the seconds counting down. The Not now notification appears at the same time.
An empty wedge. Nothing will lock.
Never seen nearby, off your wrist, locked, or Bluetooth off — the menu says which. Nothing locks from here.
A closed padlock, for as long as the Mac is locked.
Dimmed, counting until it is watching again. Nothing can lock meanwhile.
Reads the Bluetooth signal your Apple Watch already broadcasts. No connection to the Watch, no network, nothing leaves this Mac.
Settings and calibration are stored locally with the application. Signal history is kept in memory only and is gone when the app quits.
Nothing. The app has no network access and never connects to your Watch — it only listens for the signal the Watch already broadcasts. The single exception is a support email, which you compose, read and choose to send yourself.
Bluetooth, always, to read the Watch's signal. Notifications, for the countdown warning and the lock confirmation. Accessibility, only if you choose Direct lock mode.
There is no sign-in, no analytics, no advertising and no third-party SDKs.
Locking works exactly the same either way. Pro, the commercial licence, is what you buy to use it at work — and it unlocks the tuning.
Locking works fully, on all your Macs, at the built-in settings. Choosing your Watch, calibration, the away level, the wrist rules, warnings, lock mode, test mode and launch at login are all free. The menu shows “Personal use only” and that is the whole of it.
If you use it for work, please buy Pro. An annual subscription through the App Store, from the Get Pro button in the menu or Settings › General, and it follows your Apple Account across your Macs.
Pro also unlocks tuning: the lock delay, the pause after unlocking, the wait before watching again, how long Not now pauses for, and the signal settings. Locking itself is the same either way.
Can contribute to ISO 27001:2022 Annex A 7.7 (Clear Desk and Clear Screen) — whether you’re working toward certification or already certified.
Help is built into the app — eight sections, including a live legend of every menu bar state.
14.6 or later. A menu bar app, with no Dock icon.
On your wrist and unlocked. Best on the same Apple Account as the Mac; a Watch on another account can be added by signal (see above). Auto Unlock is not required. Wrist detection is model-dependent: most models report it, Apple Watch SE (2nd generation) does not.
On, and jstLockIT allowed under Privacy & Security › Bluetooth.
Settings › General › Contact support opens an email with the app's diagnostics already filled in, so you do not have to describe the problem twice.