Let's talk about Automatic Login.
Let me show you how to use it.
More importantly how to disable it and why you should have it disabled.
You should absolutely NOT be using automatic login.
A lot of people don't want to have to enter a password every time they sit down at their
Mac.
I can understand.
It's kind of annoying especially if you have a Mac that's on a desktop, it's sitting in
your house.
It's not a laptop.
You're not moving it around.
You think I'd should just be able to turn it on or hit the spacebar and start working.
But a password protects your Mac.
So let's go and look at it first.
In System Preferences there are two places where you talk about automatic login.
The first is in Users & Groups.
You go in there and you go to Login Options here.
You can see Automatic Login.
I've got it turned off.
In order to work with it I need to authenticate, so I'll click here, and you can see I can
set Automatic Login for one of the users on this Mac.
I'm going to leave it to Off but even if I switched it to On I could actually turn it
off in a separate space by going back up to the main level, System Preferences, going
to Security & Privacy and then under General you can see Disable Automatic Login.
So that's checked because I have it Off.
But even if I had it On and had it set to a user checking this box would then turn it
Off.
So there's two ways to turn it off.
If you want to turn it on you would have to uncheck this then you would have to go back
to where I was before and set a user to be the one for automatic login.
But you shouldn't do that.
Obviously if you have a MacBook and you've ever taken it out of your house the reasons
are obvious.
It's easy for somebody to swipe it and then they have access to everything.
They can check your email.
They can do everything that's on your Mac because they don't need to login.
But even if it's in your house or in your workplace and nobody is supposed to have access
to it, well, you know, things happen.
There are break-ins.
There are ways people get access to your stuff.
You know that one occasion where somebody actually does get access to it, they can get
to everything.
Which could be way more valuable that what's actually in your house.
It's so important.
I know it takes you a few seconds to login.
Actually if you're doing it on a regular basis, I probably have to login to my Mac a couple
dozen times a day, it gets real quick.
You know that password.
It's fast.
Of course, if you have a MacBook Pro with the touch ID it's even faster.
But even if you enter the password super fast, it takes me a second just for my fingers to
go over that password, so once you get used to it it's very quick.
It's kind of like putting on a seatbelt when you get in the car.
Right.
I mean that takes a second to do and you have to do it every time you get in the car and
take it off every time you get out.
But you still do it because you know that is safer.
It's the same thing here.
You should absolutely be using a password and not using automatic login.
Now there is a way to alleviate things a little bit.
You can set this Require password and you can set it to a time here.
Just having it set to five minutes can actually cutout a lot of your logins.
So, for instance, say you're in your office, you're working and your Mac goes to sleep.
Now you think, oh great now I have to enter my password again.
But if you have it set to five seconds, one minute, or five minutes then you know you
could actually press the spacebar when you see that happen and you won't have to login
again.
Yet it's still providing most of the protections because chances are nobody is going to break-in
to your house within five minutes of you getting up from your computer.
I mean it probably is going to take you five minutes to get out of the house let alone
for something bad to happen.
Setting it to five minutes, maybe even fifteen, is a way to alleviate the issue.
But anything longer than that you're entering into a kind of danger zone.
I wouldn't go there.
You'll also want to make sure this item is actually checked.
Without it checked that means if you walk away from your Mac it won't automatically
log you out.
You actually have to manually log yourself out.
You want it to automatically log you out so that you don't have to worry about doing that.
Think of it this way.
When you get in a car you have to put your seatbelt on.
It's a little bit of an inconvenience but it's definitely worth it for safety.
But it's also inconvenient because then you have to take your seatbelt off to get out
of the car.
The great thing is with your Mac you don't have to take your seatbelt off.
It's done automatically for you.
You just have to worry about putting it on, entering the password, when you first start
using your Mac.
So I can't stress enough how important it is that you do not use Automatic Login.
It's just part of using a computer today.
It's like wearing a seatbelt or wearing a bike helmet, or not giving your social security
number to strangers.
It's just one of those things that you need to do.
Enter a password to startup or wakeup your Mac every time.