How to thwart mischievous son by disabling disc tray opening on Mac OS X

January 8, 2006 12:43 AM

I came home today and woke my Mac (OS X 10.3.9) from sleep, triggering a horrible cocophony from the disc tray, which I opened to find that my darling son had stacked a DVD and a Delta blues CD on top of each other in there. Luckily, the drive wasn't damaged, but I want to disable the top right disc eject button to prevent him from doing this again. How?

An Apple tech note on setting up kiosks says:

7) How do I disable the Eject Key?

There is currently no supported way to disable the Eject Key. You can however, prevent any new inserted media from being mounted.

Unsupported is OK.

posted by planetkyoto to computers & internet (11 comments total)

How about simply unplugging the keyboard? Or upgrade to the Apple wireless keyboard and keep it locked in a drawer (or simply out of sight).
posted by aladfar at 1:27 AM on January 8, 2006

Or downgrade to a cheap PC keyboard with no eject key?
posted by jaimev at 1:50 AM on January 8, 2006

There used to be a program for Macs that had F12 doubling as an eject key:

http://www.obdev.at/products/iject/index.html

Unfortunately it seems to cause kernel panics in versions of OS X newer than 10.1.5 because of some changes Apple made. If you're technically inclined there's a brief article about intercepting keyboard events with kernel extensions:

http://www.obdev.at/developers/articles/00001.html

Maybe you could just pry the key off? :)
posted by saraswati at 1:57 AM on January 8, 2006

Pry the key off manually and insert some sort of manual blocking (glue, whatever) if you don't mind the cosmetic issues. Otherwise it is difficult although keeping the lid closed and using a cheap keyboard without the F12 key could work as well (and an alternative display)? Or what about just putting some duct tape in front of the Superdrive when you are not using it yourself? I'm not sure how old your son is but would he go at these lengths to use your computer if you made it clear that it wasn't allowed without your supervision? Finally, maybe a good telling-off is in order depending on his age.

I guess we've covered all the alternatives here now unless you want to do some serious kernel hacking which I wouldn't recommend just because life is too short to hack around like that and cause a lot of potential problems in the long run.
posted by keijo at 2:23 AM on January 8, 2006

Move the mac in a lockable room?
posted by slater at 4:10 AM on January 8, 2006

Use what NASA does for its range safety Big Red Button, and put a plastic cover over yours. Some disposable razors have protective caps you could possibly modify to fit and glue flat.
posted by dhartung at 4:51 AM on January 8, 2006

A different way: under the Security preferences you can select "Require password to wake this computer from sleep or screen saver"

Tedious, but it works.
posted by O9scar at 9:10 AM on January 8, 2006

Well, I still want to be able to use it, and I want my wife to be able to play videos for my son when I'm not here, so I guess what I really want is to remap the key so it requires an "option-eject" or "command-eject" key combination. since that doesn't seem to be possible, I suppose I'll go with O9scar's partial solution for a while.

My almost-two-year-old is definitely not going to be slowed down by a plastic cover. It took him only about 3 days to figure out the "child-proof" latches on the cookie drawer last summer.

Thanks all for suggestions.
posted by planetkyoto at 9:31 AM on January 8, 2006

I used keijo's method when I wanted to disable the "power" button on one of my keyboards, which Linux interpreted as "shut down immediately as if I had pulled the plug out of the wall" which...wasn't very convenient. I placed a strip of scotch tape between the contact membranes inside the keyboard - easily reversible if I ever decide to use the key again.

Though, I can see this isn't what you're looking for.
posted by odinsdream at 9:52 AM on January 8, 2006

Talk to your kid about it? Teach him to not touch daddy's computer without daddy's permission?

Or is two years too young for this kind of thing? I wouldn't think so, but what the hell do I know?
posted by Item at 12:05 PM on January 8, 2006

Anyone know a way to do this on a powerbook keyboard?? I keep hitting it on accident...!
posted by joshgray at 4:51 PM on January 9, 2006