When you step away from your Mac, you should always lock the screen to protect your privacy. While you can click the Apple menu and select “Lock Screen” or press a keyboard shortcut (Ctrl + Cmd + Q), there is an even faster, completely mouse-driven method: Hot Corners. Hot Corners allow you to assign a specific action to each of the four physical corners of your display. By simply flicking your mouse cursor into the extreme corner of your monitor, you can instantly trigger the screen saver, lock your Mac, or open the Notification Center.
How to Configure Hot Corners in macOS
Hot Corners have been a staple feature of macOS for years, but their configuration menu is slightly hidden within the System Settings.
- Click the Apple Logo in the top-left corner of your screen.
- Select System Settings from the dropdown menu (or “System Preferences” on older macOS versions).
- In the left-hand sidebar menu, scroll down and click on Desktop & Dock.
- Scroll all the way down to the very bottom of the right-hand panel. You will find a button labeled Hot Corners… Click it.
A popup window will appear featuring a small graphical representation of your monitor, with four dropdown menus positioned at the four corners of the screen.
Assigning the Screen Saver or Lock Action
You can now decide exactly what happens when your mouse hits a specific corner.
- Click the dropdown menu for the corner you want to use. (The bottom-right or bottom-left corners are usually best, as the top corners are often used for clicking the Apple menu or the Control Center).
- From the list of available actions, select Start Screen Saver (if you just want to hide your work visually) or select Lock Screen (if you want to require a password to wake the computer back up).
- Click Done to save your configuration.
How to Prevent Accidental Triggers
The biggest complaint about Hot Corners is accidentally triggering the screen saver when you are just trying to move your mouse to click a scroll bar or close a window. To prevent this, you can require a modifier key.
When you are in the Hot Corners setup menu, hold down the Command (⌘), Option (⌥), Control (⌃), or Shift (⇧) key before clicking the dropdown menu to select your action. You will see the symbol for that key appear next to the action name. Now, the Hot Corner will only trigger if you physically hold down that specific key on your keyboard while simultaneously pushing the mouse cursor into the corner.