Fast User Switching/Apple Menu?

If adding a keyboard shortcut would be acceptable, then one can invoke CGSession -suspend to show the fast user switching. (You can use CGSession -switchToUserID `id -g bob`, for example, to switch to a specific user.)

Searching for that word CGSession will reveal many options, like Equivalent of Win-L on Mac or Create a keyboard shortcut for fast user switching in Mac OS X.

And rather than adding it to the Apple menu, in 10.6 Snow Leopard it's quite easy to add it to the Services menu of each application:

Start Applications » Automator
Select "Service" for the template of the new Automator workflow
In the top of the right pane, select "Service receives no input in any application"
Drag action "Run Shell Script" from the left pane into the workflow on the right pane
Leave Shell at its default "/bin/bash", and replace the default command cat with the following, without any line breaks:

/System/Library/CoreServices/Menu\ Extras/User.menu/Contents/Resources/CGSession -suspend
Optional: click the Run button to test
Hit Cmd-S to save. The name you type will be the name in the Services menu. The workflow will be saved in ~/Library/Services.

Fast User Switching in Automator

To assign a keyboard shortcut, in 10.6:

Open System Preferences » Keyboard » pane Keyboard Shortcuts
Select "Services" in the left pane
Scroll down to General in the right pane
Double-click to the right of the Automator workflow you just created
Press the keys you want to use, and switch panes to ensure the new shortcut is saved
- Please note that in 10.6 there is a bug that might prevent you from assigning services to function keys.

Arjan

Posted 2009-09-23T16:55:32.557

Reputation: 29 084

I tried assigning Cmd-L as the shortcut, to make is similar to Windows' Win-L, but that didn't work because some applications, like Web Browsers, use Cmd-L shortcut too. So I ended up assigning Cmd-Shift-L, instead. – Gurjeet Singh – 2014-08-25T14:53:21.253

1I tried assigning Cmd-L as the shortcut, to make is similar to Windows' Win-L, but that didn't work because some applications, like Web Browsers, use Cmd-L shortcut too. I tried some other combinations, but none of them worked in all the apps I use regularly. So I ended up assigning Cmd-Shift-2, instead. – Gurjeet Singh – 2014-08-25T15:11:31.860

1Just to make this more up-to-date: I can confirm this still works on Yosemite 10.10.5. – Arc676 – 2015-09-04T09:47:41.147

That is a very good tutorial. – Milhous – 2011-07-21T19:55:14.537

Fast User Switching/Apple Menu?

Answers