How To Change The Login Screen Background In MacOS

Change Login Screen Background In MacOS

You might notice a blurred image while turning ON your Mac. It’s true that no one wishes to have blurred pictures behind the login screen or on their desktop. It’s a blurred version of your current login screen background wallpaper or Sierra’s iconic wallpaper by default. The versions of MacOS can be Sierra, Yosemite, and El Capitan.

You can change the default image behind your login screen to a different wallpaper. Or if you want the image to be clear instead of a blurred one. Yeah! It’s possible and easy moreover. It is as simple as changing your desktop wallpaper.

Here is how to configure the way exactly in the way you wish to have. This method works in Sierra, Yosemite, and El Capitan MacOS.

Change Your Desktop Wallpaper:

As previously said, changing the blurred image behind your login screen is as simple as changing your desktop wallpaper. And however, this is the easiest way. Suppose that your wallpaper is in a rotating folder of images, but MacOS uses the default Sierra wallpaper. If you want to use one of your own images, you can do that without disturbing the rotating folder of images.

First, right-click your desktop, then click “Change Desktop Background.” Now change the desktop background to whatever image you would like to have your login screen to be.

You can switch back to the rotating folder you had before if you want it. But, first, make sure that MacOS has set your new image as the background for your login screen. Open the finder, then tap on Go, and then Go To Folder. Type /Library/Caches and click Go. Find an image named “com.apple.desktop.admin.png” in this folder. If your changes took hold, this image will be a blurred version of the image that you set as your wallpaper. This will take a minute or two sometimes, so wait until it happens.

After seeing your image, go ahead and turn ON your rotating wallpaper, if you want. Now, you can log out of your account or restart your Mac to check your new login screen.

Note: in the case of a rotating wallpaper, this change will not affect your lock screen. Instead, the lock screen will always show a version of your current wallpaper. The login screen, however, is now set as a blurred version of your preferred image.

Use An Unblurred Picture For Your Login Screen:

If you would rather have your login screen image be unblurred, you can do that too. First, follow the above steps so that there is an image in the /Library/Caches folder. Then, copy that image to your desktop by dragging it there.

We’ll use this image in a little bit. First, open the image you’d like to show behind your login screen with Preview. Select the entire canvas (Command+A), then copy it (Command+C).

Then, go to your desktop and open the file you copied from /Library/Caches. Now paste (Command+V) the copied canvas.

You can move and resize the image that you want to have a login screen background. So that you get everything just right. When you’re done, save the image (Command+S). Again go back to your desktop, and drag your edited image to the /Library/Caches folder. You will be asked if you’d like to replace the file that already exists; click “Replace.”

You’ve now placed your custom background image. Log out of your user account to see the login screen background:

The below example shows that the white maple leaf is making it hard to read the white text used by MacOS. To fix this, a different version of this image can be used where the color of leaf changes to blue.

Here, this version puts the darker part of the image behind the text. This makes it easier to read all the text provided. To avoid such problems, favor dark images over light, and simple images over the complex.

You can make an image by yourself over messing around with Preview if you are good at photoshop. You can do that, but the image you create needs to meet specific criteria. It must be: