lock your mac keyboard
you want to run a cloth over the keys, and the Mac wants to type. shutting it down for a thirty-second wipe is absurd, and holding the cloth carefully never works. hop.tools freezes the whole keyboard while everything else keeps running.
when you need it
- wiping crumbs and dust off the keys without closing anything
- a cat that walks across the desk at the worst possible moment
- a small child who has discovered that keys make things happen
- watching something on an external display, where a nudged key changes the volume or skips a track
how to disable the keyboard on a mac
- open the panel and pick keyboard lock
- tap one, five or fifteen minutes — or infinity, if you would rather end it yourself
- a cover appears explaining what is going on, and the menu bar icon turns into a keyboard, so nobody has to guess why typing stopped
- unlock with the mouse, by opening hop.tools, or by holding esc and shift together for five seconds
the whole keyboard, media row included
half-measures are useless here. a lock that leaves brightness, volume and the media row alive still lets a cloth mute your call or skip your track.
so every key goes quiet, function row and all. the mouse and trackpad keep working, because that is how you unlock it.
keys are dropped, never read
an app that intercepts a keyboard deserves suspicion, so it is worth being precise: while the lock is on, key presses are discarded. nothing is recorded, nothing is stored and nothing is sent anywhere.
hop.tools is open source, has no accounts and no telemetry — the only thing it ever sends is its own version number when it checks for an update. the code is on GitHub if you would rather read it than take our word for it.
how it compares
macOS has nothing for this. the usual advice is to shut the Mac down, or to lock the screen — which stops your work along with the keys.
the point of this module is that everything keeps running. the download continues, the call goes on, the render finishes, and the keyboard is simply not part of it for a few minutes.
frequently asked questions
- does the trackpad stop working too?
- no, the mouse and trackpad stay live — that is one of the ways you unlock. only keys are frozen.
- how do i unlock if the lock is set to infinity?
- three ways: click unlock with the mouse, open hop.tools from the menu bar, or hold esc and shift together for five seconds.
- does it record what i type?
- no. while the lock is on, presses are discarded without being read. nothing is stored and nothing leaves your Mac.
- will my Mac keep working while the keyboard is locked?
- yes. calls, downloads, renders and anything else carry on untouched. only the keyboard is out of the picture.
- does it need special permissions?
- macOS asks for accessibility permission the first time, because intercepting keys is a privileged action. you can revoke it in system settings at any point.
other tools in hop.tools
- Keep Awake — Downloads, renders and calls run to the end. Even with the lid closed.
- Color Picker — Any pixel on screen, in hex, rgb and hsl at once.
- Archives — zip, rar, 7z and the rest — unpacked right where you are looking.