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
    CSS Gradients

    With CSS border-radius, I showed you how CSS can bridge the gap between design and development by adding rounded corners to elements.  CSS gradients are another step in that direction.  Now that CSS gradients are supported in Internet Explorer 8+, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome...

  • By
    An Interview with Eric Meyer

    Your early CSS books were instrumental in pushing my love for front end technologies. What was it about CSS that you fell in love with and drove you to write about it? At first blush, it was the simplicity of it as compared to the table-and-spacer...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Create a Dynamic Flickr Image Search with the Dojo Toolkit

    The Dojo Toolkit is a treasure chest of great JavaScript classes.  You can find basic JavaScript functionality classes for AJAX, node manipulation, animations, and the like within Dojo.  You can find elegant, functional UI widgets like DropDown Menus, tabbed interfaces, and form element replacements within...

  • By
    PHP IMDB Scraper

    It's been quite a while since I've written a PHP grabber and the itch finally got to me. This time the victim is the International Movie Database, otherwise known as IMDB. IMDB has info on every movie ever made (or so it seems). Their...

Discussion

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