ScreenLocker

Whenever you leave the computer for a short while it’s a good idea to lock it, especially when working in an office with multiple individuals. A simple hotkey command is all it takes to do this, but there are also third-party applications which help in this regard. As such, ScreenLocker wants to lock the desktop for you in case you do forget.

One advantage in particular here is the lack of a setup process, which saves you a great deal of time and effort. This also means that you can carry it around on a USB flash drive to always have a means of locking the computer while away. Don’t worry, registry entries are not altered, unless you choose to make it run with Windows, but even so, no damage is done to the target PC.

There’s a pretty high chance you don’t even notice the application starts, because it goes directly to the tray area on launch, and the associated icon can be pretty difficult to spot. Even so, this doesn’t make accommodation any harder, and interacting with the icon brings up a small menu to help configure general options.

There are several time values preconfigured, such as the idle time required to trigger the lock session, whether or not to make it run with Windows, the pause time, and the possibility to save all options. Both the idle requirement and the pause time need to be specified in minutes, which might be a bit of a hassle in case others desperately wait for you to leave the PC.

Unfortunately, you might have a hard time modifying time values, even though the process only requires input inside an editable field. This is because the panel hides whenever you click any other areas than supported ones, which can even be a sensitive area inside the panel.

All things considered, we can state that ScreenLocker comes with good intentions, but it’s not quite prepared for what it wants to accomplish. On the one hand, it can be difficult to set the time. On the other hand, values are specified in minutes, which can be more than enough for someone to snoop through your files.