Log a User Out from Command Line

By  on  

Automation is a system administrator, support agent, and tech savvy person's dream. Automating tasks via scripts remotely helps to get clients out of trouble or even the organization itself. Oftentimes big updates can require users log out. Logging a user out from command line is super easy on Macs!

To log a user out of macOS with a confirmation warning, execute the following from command line:

osascript -e 'tell app "System Events" to log out'

To force log out of macOS without warning, execute the following from command line:

osascript -e 'tell application "loginwindow" to  «event aevtrlgo»'

osascript is a really amazing utility, one that lets you change system volume, send iMessages, and identify app IDs. Readable automation commands? Priceless!

Recent Features

  • By
    Create Namespaced Classes with MooTools

    MooTools has always gotten a bit of grief for not inherently using and standardizing namespaced-based JavaScript classes like the Dojo Toolkit does.  Many developers create their classes as globals which is generally frowned up.  I mostly disagree with that stance, but each to their own.  In any event...

  • By
    Chris Coyier’s Favorite CodePen Demos

    David asked me if I'd be up for a guest post picking out some of my favorite Pens from CodePen. A daunting task! There are so many! I managed to pick a few though that have blown me away over the past few months. If you...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Build a Toggling Announcement Slider Using MooTools 1.2

    A few of my customer have asked for me to create a subtle but dynamic (...I know...) way for them to advertise different specials on their website. Not something that would display on every page, but periodically or only the homepage. Using a trick...

  • By
    CSS Sprites

    The idea of CSS sprites is pretty genius. For those of you who don't know the idea of a sprite, a sprite is basically multiple graphics compiled into one image. The advantages of using sprites are: Fewer images for the browser to download, which means...

Discussion

    Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!