How do I reduce the delay when unlocking my Mac?
This sounds like normal behavior to me, especially if the machine is a bit older.
As far as I know, there is no setting you can change to speed this up.

I can confirm that on a solid 2017 15&quot; MBP there is a ~0.5 seconds &quot;wait&quot; time after hitting enter and the screen unlocking. But this not only varies from machine to machine, but especially from the programs that are running and if you have multiple monitors connected.

What you could try, but IMO is not worth it, make a clean install (preferably on an external SSD) with just one sample user with no other programs installed and check if you still have the delay.

If the answer is yes, then it's definitely normal behavior
If the answer is no, you might want to look into programs that are continuously running in the background, which could impact general performance.

In general though, I suspect investigating this (IMO) non-issue will take you more time than &quot;waiting&quot; one second every unlock.