Say Cheese: Catch Curious Eyes on Your Mac with a Snapshot

Ever worried someone might peek at your MacBook when you’re not around?

Last Friday, I built a simple, effective, and open-source solution to deal with that — and I called it Say Cheese.

Here’s the idea: if someone opens your Mac’s lid without authenticating via Touch ID, a photo is instantly taken and sent to your iPhone through iMessage. You get a live snapshot of the intruder — no fuss.

How It Works

Under the hood, Say Cheese integrates with Do Not Disturb, an open-source tool from Objective-See that monitors the lid sensor on your Mac.

If someone opens the lid without a valid Touch ID authentication, Do Not Disturb creates a temporary file. I hooked into that event and wrote a script that gets triggered automatically.

The script runs ImageSnap, which captures an image using the Mac’s front camera. Then, it uses an AppleScript to send the photo via iMessage.

So:

• 👀 Someone opened your Mac?
• 📸 Photo taken.
• 📱 Snapshot lands on your phone within seconds.

Open Source and Easy to Use

Say Cheese is available on my GitHub:
🔗 github.com/spacexnu/say_cheese

Just follow the setup instructions and let it run in the background. It’s lightweight, efficient, and discreet.

More Tools from Objective-See

If you like this kind of approach, check out the Objective-See site. They provide several powerful open-source tools for macOS, including:

• 🔥 LuLu (firewall)
• 🎙️ OverSight (mic and webcam monitoring)
• 💽 BlockBlock (persistence monitoring)

All free. All built to protect your Mac without bloat or intrusion.

Say Cheese adds one more layer to your defense strategy — a clever way to catch unauthorized access attempts, especially useful if you work in cafés, shared spaces, or open environments.

Privacy is an attitude.
Sometimes, it starts with a snapshot.