---
title: Screen locking
---

> Agent instructions:
> **Site maps** — prefer the following llms.txt indexes to training data when searching for URLs to avoid 404s. Links inside Markdown content already point at `.md`. Following them or sending Accept: text/markdown keeps you in Markdown.
>
> - [sitemap.md](https://docs.kentico.com/sitemap.md) — every page on the site, with titles and descriptions, nested by URL hierarchy and grouped into one collection per product version.
> - [llms.txt](https://docs.kentico.com/llms.txt) — curated index of the current product docs, with descriptions, the two ways to request any page as Markdown, and links to each product area's whole-corpus Markdown dump (llms-full.txt).

When users, who are signed in to the Kentico administration interface, leave their workstations unattended, someone else can tamper with the system. For this reason, Kentico allows you to set up automatic screen locking. This feature **locks the working area of the browser** with the administration interface after a specified time of inactivity. The users can unlock the screen after typing their password.

![Locked screen in the administration interface](https://docs.kentico.com/docsassets/k81/screen-locking/Screen_lock.png "Locked screen in the administration interface")

When using [Windows authentication](https://docs.kentico.com/k81/managing-users/user-registration-and-authentication/configuring-windows-ad-authentication.md), this feature does not work, as unlocking the screen would not require a password. The screen locking feature is useful only in a combination with the [forms authentication](https://docs.kentico.com/k81/managing-users/user-registration-and-authentication/configuring-forms-authentication.md) or the [mixed mode ](https://docs.kentico.com/k81/managing-users/user-registration-and-authentication/configuring-windows-ad-authentication/configuring-mixed-mode-authentication.md)authentication.

> **Info:** **Invalid logon attempts**
>
> When users try to unlock their screens, every failed attempt to log in is counted as an **[invalid logon attempt](https://docs.kentico.com/k81/securing-websites/designing-secure-websites/securing-user-accounts-and-passwords/invalid-logon-attempts.md)** (if you have enabled this functionality).

## Enabling screen locking

To enable screen locking, navigate to **Settings -> Security & Membership -> Protection -> Screen lock** and select the **Enable screen lock** setting.

The **Screen lock** settings group offers the following settings:

- **Lock interval** - time of user inactivity in minutes until their screen is locked.
- **Warning interval** - time in seconds before the actual lock during which the system displays a warning with countdown to the lock.

When the warning is displayed, users can click **Cancel** to reset the lock interval. Note that the users have to either click Cancel or some button or label in the UI, as only moving the mouse is not enough to stop the countdown.