I had feature request for our Secure Remote Access solution to lock a Mac locally while doing a screen sharing session to it. Apple Remote Desktop has had this feature for a while, but only worked if you were running an Apple Remote Desktop when connecting to a remote Mac. I wanted a way to block the local screen as well as disable the keyboard and mouse. I came upon this wonderful project from Fran Rogers on github that does exactly what I was looking for. Before adding it to our Secure Remote Access App, I thought it would be a neat tool to package up for Mac Admins to use when connecting to remote Macs.
I created a Status Menu item for the curtains command line tool to make it easy to lock and unlock the screen. When you select Lock, the keyboard, mouse, and screen are blocked on the local Mac, but the screen sharing session can still control the remote Mac. When done, selecting Unlock brings the Mac back to normal mode.
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