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parl_matchtoday at 5:44 PM5 repliesview on HN

I really wish Apple would offer a pin option on macos. For this reason, precisely. Either that, or an option to automatically disable touchid after a short amount of time (eg an hour or if my phone doesn't connect to the laptop)


Replies

fpolingtoday at 5:57 PM

You can setup a separated account with a long password on MacOS and remove your user account from accounts that can unlock FileVault. Then you can change your account to use a short password. You can also change various settings regarding how long Mac has to sleep before requiring to unlock FileVault.

show 1 reply
xoatoday at 6:06 PM

As another alternative, rather than using Touch ID you can setup a Yubikey or similar hardware key for login to macOS. Then your login does indeed become a PIN with 3 tries before lockout. That plus a complex password is pretty convenient but not biometric. It's what I've done for a long time on my desktop devices.

Wistartoday at 6:38 PM

On my Macbook Pro, I usually need to use both touch and a password but that might be only when some hours have passed between log ins.

NetMageSCWtoday at 8:19 PM

You can script a time out if desired.

redeemantoday at 9:15 PM

uhm, are you saying its not possible to require an actual password to unlock osx?