macOS Ventura Custom Screen Saver Idle Time Change

Controlling the idle time before the Screen Saver activates is a common sense security practice. It is one of the first items that auditors ask for.

For a long time we have been able to control this setting via MDM profiles, but Ventura introduced a welcome change.

Let’s take macOS Monterey as an example. In the screenshot below, a profile is being applied to set the Screen Saver to activate if the device is idle for 900 seconds (15 minutes).

As we can see, the profile is applied, but the UI in System Preferences displays 20 minutes. Although you can check the contents of the plist com.apple.screensaver or view the contents of the Profile, eagle-eyed users will still be puzzled by the discrepancy. macOS Big Sur also has the same UI limitation. Some MDM vendors also provide a drop-down of choices that mirror the ones provided by Apple, and don’t even offer a field to enter a time.

Without a configuration profile, we can see what the default UI options are:

Here we have the same profile installed on macOS Ventura.

Success! We are now able to see the 15 minutes setting and a new “(custom)” label is added.

This is a minor but very welcome improvement, as it makes clear to the end-user (and auditors who want evidence of an applied policy) what the actual setting is.

–GG

• macOS
• Ventura