macOS: Cat protection for keyboard and trackpad
Owners of house cats know the problem: many cats love MacBooks and Apple keyboards. The app Cats Lock now offers a solution.
Cats Lock blocks Macs from cats. Will the training be enough?
(Image: Todd Alexander)
Anyone who wants to try to dissuade their cat from stepping on Mac keyboards and trackpads can now download a new training app: Cats Lock, available in Apple's Mac App Store, combines a lock mode with various potentially unpleasant sounds that are played to the animal as soon as it is detected. However, this is only helpful if you are not sitting in front of the keyboard yourself, as the app also locks the macOS computer for the user. So you still have to fend off house cat attacks yourself when they happen in front of you.
No more trips to System Settings
Cats Lock is from developer Todd Alexander and costs just under 3 euros. The app runs on macOS 14. It comes with its menu bar icon and an additional keyboard shortcut to activate it quickly. “Hit the lock, let her settle in, and get back to whatever you were doing — without random typing, deleted documents, or a sudden trip to System Settings.”
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If desired, a sound will also be played. Options include a vacuum cleaner, dog barking, cat hissing, or any other sound that can be uploaded. By default, the app warns via voice output about a cat on the keyboard. Whether this is enough to dissuade the velvet paws from going to the Mac remains to be seen – they will likely get used to it sooner or later.
A warm spot on the MacBook
Cats particularly like notebooks because they often emit heat in the keyboard area. They also know that they can distract the user with this behavior and attract attention. If the Mac is actively running, very strange keyboard shortcuts can occur, which in the worst case can lead to data loss or unwanted settings.
A video on Alexander's website shows how Cats Lock works in practice. Fortunately, the app is a one-time purchase, so you don't have to subscribe for cat protection. Cats Lock runs until the Mac goes into sleep mode. The latter is also the simplest protection against the four-legged friends – but with MacBooks, it's best to keep them closed so that the cat doesn't enter too many incorrect password attempts and lock out the user.
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