Make more of your login screen

Putting contact details on the login screen can help someone return a MacBook

> Your Mac’s login window is a familiar sight, but it’s also a bit boring. After all, most of the screen is taken up with a blurred image of the desktop background, with user accounts listed in a row across the middle of it.

The good news is that you can change the background image to anything you want. Just make sure your chosen image is the same size, in pixels, as your screen, and that it doesn’t have anything in the middle that will clash with the user icons.

Here we also show you ways to uncover more of your background, improve security a little bit, and leave a note for anyone who finds your Mac in case you misplace it.

1

Set a new backg round Find a picture you want to use and scale and crop it to fit your screen. Save it as a PNG file with the name com.apple.desktop.admin.png, then place it in /Library/Caches. (That’s the Library at the top of your startup disk.)

2

Add a custom message In case your Mac gets lost, go to the Security & Privacy pane in System Preferences and click its General tab. Turn on “Show a message…” click “Set Lock message” and type something; including contact details may be useful.

3

Remove some clutter To hide the buttons at the bottom of the login window, go to the Users & Groups pane in System Preferences, click the padlock and authenticate. Click Login Options and turn off “Show Sleep, Restart and Shut Down buttons.”

4

Change the prompt Still in the Users & Groups pane, and authenticated to make changes, click Login Options. Next to “Display login window as” select “Name and password.” By doing this, you no longer give away some of your credentials.