Walk away. It’s locked.
Walk away. It’s locked.
NearBye watches how near your iPhone is and locks your Mac the moment you leave the room. No rituals, no unlock theater — it just locks.
Download on the Mac App Store — $4.99
macOS 14+ · One-time purchase · No accounts, no network
NearBye
Your iPhone is nearby
Your Mac locks when you walk away.
Lock when you’re
Steps away A room away Far away
Distance, in human terms
Steps away, a room away, or far away. Pick how far is too far — no dBm charts, no calibration dance.
Never mid-sentence
If you’re typing, it waits. The activity guard holds the lock until your hands leave the keys.
Fails locked, not open
Bluetooth off? Connection dead? Phone never found? Every failure path ends in a locked Mac.
HOW IT WORKS
Three steps. Then forget it exists.
1
Pick your iPhone
On first launch NearBye offers your own iPhone in one click. Watches and AirPods work too.
2
Walk away
Signal fades past your chosen distance, the grace period runs out, and the real macOS lock screen comes up.
3
Walk back
It notices your return and re-arms by itself. Apple Watch auto-unlock lets you straight back in.
HONEST ABOUT SECURITY
Walk-away protection, not marketing theater
Most proximity locks oversell. Here is exactly what NearBye does and doesn’t do.
Fails locked, not open
Bluetooth off, connection dead, phone never found — every failure path ends in a locked Mac.
Spoof-resistant by design
A bonded iPhone’s identity is resolved from its rotating private address. Without the pairing key, broadcasting fake “I’m here” frames does nothing.
A grace window exists
Between you leaving and the lock firing there are \~10–20 seconds. This stops the office snoop, not a sprinting thief.
Nothing leaves your Mac
No network calls, no accounts, no analytics. Settings sit in UserDefaults; logs contain integers.
Questions, answered plainly
Does it unlock my Mac too? + −
No — sandboxed App Store apps can’t type your password, and pretending otherwise would be theater. Apple Watch auto-unlock and Touch ID already make re-entry instant.
Will it drain my iPhone’s battery? + −
No. It’s one extra BLE connection answering a signal query every 2 seconds — the kind of load AirPods put on your phone all day. You won’t find it in the battery stats.
What if someone sits down right as I leave? + −
Honest answer: there’s a \~10–20 second grace window, and the default activity guard holds the lock while anyone is typing. You can shorten the grace and turn the guard off in Options.
Do I need an account or an internet connection? + −
No. NearBye has no accounts and makes no network connections — it works entirely offline on your Mac. Nothing you do in it is ever sent anywhere.
Which devices work? + −
Anything with Bluetooth LE. Your iPhone is the obvious choice; Apple Watch and AirPods work; so does a fitness band. macOS 14 or newer required.
$4.99. Once. That’s it.
No subscription, no account, no analytics. One coffee, and your Mac locks itself for good.
macOS 14 Sonoma or newer · Apple silicon & Intel