The Mac lock screen shortcut, plus sleep, restart and shut down — and which work on your keyboard

The Mac lock screen shortcut is ⌃⌘Q (Control-Command-Q), and it works on every Mac keyboard. The shortcuts for sleep, restart and shut down are where it gets confusing: Apple's own list has a whole family of power-button chords, and almost every one of them comes with the small print "on built-in keyboards without Touch ID". If you've tried one and nothing happened, that's usually why. This guide sorts out which shortcut works on which Mac, and how to give yourself the missing ones.

Every power shortcut, sorted by keyboard

Everything below is from Apple's Mac keyboard shortcuts page. The right-hand column is the part most lists leave out.

What you want	Shortcut	Works on
Lock the screen	`⌃⌘Q`	Every keyboard
Lock the screen	Press the Touch ID button	Keyboards with Touch ID
Log out (with confirmation)	`⇧⌘Q`	Every keyboard
Log out (no confirmation)	`⌥⇧⌘Q`	Every keyboard
Sleep	`⌥⌘` + power button, or hold power 1.5 s	Built-in keyboards without Touch ID
Put only the displays to sleep	`⌃⇧` + power button	Built-in keyboards without Touch ID
Restart / Sleep / Shut Down dialog	`⌃` + power button	Built-in keyboards without Touch ID
Force restart, no saving	`⌃⌘` + power button	Built-in keyboards without Touch ID
Quit all apps, then shut down	`⌃⌥⌘` + power button	Built-in keyboards without Touch ID
Force the Mac off when it's frozen	Press and hold the power button	Every Mac

So the honest summary: lock and log out are universal; sleep, restart and shut down by chord are mostly for older Macs. On a MacBook with Touch ID, or a Magic Keyboard with Touch ID, the top-right key is a fingerprint sensor first and a power button second, and Apple documents the modifier chords only for keyboards without it. Pressing it once locks the screen; holding it forces the Mac off. That's it.

Lock your Mac: the two-second habit

If you only learn one of these, make it ⌃⌘Q. It's the Mac equivalent of Windows-key + L: your apps and windows stay exactly where they are, and you come back to the login screen with everything still open. (It is not quitting anything, despite the Q — the ⌃ is what makes it the lock command.)

On a Touch ID Mac, a single tap of the Touch ID button does the same thing and is even quicker when you're already reaching to stand up. Don't hold it, though: a long press is the force-shutdown, and that doesn't ask you to save anything.

Two other ways to lock, useful if you'd rather not use the keyboard:

Apple menu → Lock Screen. Always there, on every Mac.
A hot corner. In System Settings → Desktop & Dock → Hot Corners…, set a corner to Lock Screen. Hold a modifier key while choosing it so it only fires when you mean it — our hot corners guide explains the trick.

Make sure "display off" actually means locked

Putting the display to sleep and locking the Mac are different things. Whether a sleeping display asks for your password depends on one setting: System Settings → Lock Screen → Require password after screen saver begins or display is turned off. Set it to Immediately if you want display sleep and the screen saver to count as a lock. Leave it at a longer interval and anyone who touches the trackpad within that window is straight back into your session.

Sleep from the keyboard

On a Mac without Touch ID — older MacBooks with a regular power key — ⌥⌘ + power puts it to sleep, as does holding the power button for about a second and a half.

On a Touch ID Mac there is no built-in sleep chord at all. Your options:

Close the lid. On a MacBook that's still the fastest sleep there is.
Apple menu → Sleep. You can reach it without the mouse: ⌃F2 (with fn on many keyboards) focuses the menu bar, and the arrow keys and Return do the rest. See menu bar keyboard navigation.
Give Sleep its own shortcut. In System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts… → App Shortcuts, add one for All Applications with the menu title Sleep and a chord of your choice. The same works for Restart… and Shut Down… — the title has to match the Apple menu exactly, including the ellipsis (type it with ⌥;). Our guide to creating a shortcut for any menu command walks through it step by step.
A hot corner set to Put Display to Sleep, combined with the Immediately setting above, if what you really want is "lock it and darken the screen".

Pick a chord that nothing else uses — ⌃⌥⌘ plus a letter is usually free. If the new shortcut does nothing, something else has probably claimed it first; this guide to shortcut conflicts shows how to find out what.

Restart and shut down

On a Touch ID Mac, the reliable keyboard route is the same as for sleep: Apple menu → Restart… or Shut Down…, reached through the menu bar or bound to your own App Shortcut. Two details worth knowing:

Hold ⌥ while you choose Restart, Shut Down or Log Out and macOS skips the confirmation dialog and does it immediately.
The confirmation dialog has a Reopen windows when logging back in checkbox. Leave it on and your apps come back where you left them; untick it for a genuinely clean start (handy when you're restarting because something misbehaved).

On a Mac without Touch ID, ⌃ + power brings up the Restart / Sleep / Shut Down dialog, and ⌃⌥⌘ + power quits every app and shuts down — you'll still be asked to save open work.

The two you should rarely need

⌃⌘ + power (no Touch ID) force-restarts without offering to save anything.
Holding the power button forces any Mac off.

Both throw away unsaved work, so treat them as the last step, not the first. If a single app has frozen, force quit it with ⌥⌘esc instead — Task Manager on Mac covers that — and only reach for the power button when the whole Mac has stopped responding.

Coming from Windows?

The translation is short. Windows-key + L is ⌃⌘Q. Alt-F4 on the desktop, the Shut Down dialog, is Apple menu → Shut Down… (or ⌃ + power on older MacBooks). Ctrl-Alt-Delete has no single equivalent; the Alt-F4 guide and the Task Manager guide split it into its parts.

A Mac is also designed to sleep far more than it shuts down. Restarting once in a while after updates is plenty; locking with ⌃⌘Q when you walk away, and letting it sleep overnight, is the normal rhythm.

Frequently asked questions

What is the shortcut to lock a Mac?

⌃⌘Q (Control-Command-Q). On a Mac with Touch ID, a single press of the Touch ID button also locks the screen.

Why doesn't Option-Command-Power put my MacBook to sleep?

Apple documents the power-button chords for built-in keyboards without Touch ID. On a Touch ID MacBook, use Apple menu → Sleep, close the lid, or assign your own shortcut to the Sleep menu item.

Is there a shortcut to shut down a Mac with Touch ID?

Not a built-in one. Bind your own to the Shut Down… menu item in Keyboard Shortcuts → App Shortcuts, or reach the Apple menu from the keyboard with ⌃F2.

Does Control-Command-Q quit my apps?

No. It locks the screen and leaves every app and window exactly as it was. ⌘Q on its own is the one that quits the front app.

More Mac keyboard guides live on the blog.