Mouse Unlock!—no password, just a secret click pattern

A developer created a mouse-based unlock system for their 10-year-old Linux laptop that has no fingerprint sensor or Face ID. The tool, built with Claude Code in approximately 150 lines of Python, uses evdev to detect a secret click pattern—two left clicks, two right clicks, one left click—to unlock the screen via loginctl, even on Wayland lock screens. The developer acknowledges the system is not secure but notes it eliminates the need to type a 10+ character password dozens of times daily on aging hardware.

My 10-year-old laptop has no fingerprint sensor. No Face ID. Just a keyboard. And I was typing a 10+ character password every single time I locked my screen. Lock. Type. Unlock. Lock. Type. Unlock. Repeat 40 times a day. So I thought — my mouse has 3 buttons. What if clicking them in a secret pattern could unlock the screen instead? 2 left clicks → 2 right clicks → 1 left click. Screen unlocked. I'm running Linux Fedora + KDE Plasma on a decade-old machine, so I asked Claude Code to build it from scratch. It wrote a Python daemon using evdev that: /dev/input/ works even on Wayland lock screen loginctl loginctl unlock-sessions The whole thing is ~150 lines of Python. No PAM hacks. No special hardware. Is it secure? Absolutely not — but neither is a laptop old enough to be in 5th grade. 😅 Old laptop. No biometrics. Zero excuses now. 🖱