You can customize your login screen on your Mac. This article describes how you can change your macOS Big Sur login screen to display any image you want when your Mac turns on. Here is how:
The login screen is where you enter your password.
See also:
- macOS Catalina: How To Change The Login Screen Background
- How to Change the Login Screen Background on macOS Mojave
How to change the Big Sur login screen
1. On your Mac, in the Finder, choose Go > Go to Folder.
2. Type the following pathname and click Go.
/Library/Caches/Desktop Pictures
3. In this folder, you will see one or more folders. The folders are named after the name of the user’s UUIDs. Open this folder and you will see a file named “lockscreen.png”. Please note that if you do not have a folder named Desktop Pictures, create this folder inside the Caches folder. Then you will need to create a folder with UUID value as name inside the Desktop Pictures folder (see below).
Furthermore, If Desktop Pictures folder exists but if you do not see a folder inside the Desktop Pictures folder, you will again need to create one UUID value as name. Here is how.
See also: How To Screenshot (Print Screen) And Record Screen On Your Mac
A. On your Mac, open System Preferences and click Users & Groups.
B. Click the Lock icon and enter your passcode to unlock this section.
C. Right click (or control-click) on user name and select “Advanced Options…”.
D. Now, copy the UUID of your User-ID.
E. Now go to the “/Library/Caches/Desktop Pictures” folder again. And create a new folder. The name of this folder should be your UUID.
F. Now right click this new folder and click Get Info. Make sure that your computer has Write privileges. Grant permissions Read & Write to user, admin, everyone.
See also: Mac: How To Troubleshoot Screen Flickering
4. Now select the current lockscreen.png image (if you have this image in the folder) and rename it old-lockscreen.png.
5. Now find an image or photo that you want to use as your login screen background and drag-and-drop the image (name it lockscreen.png) into the open folder.
Now restart your Mac and you are done.
See also:
I can find the file of the ugly pink photo but I do not know how to change the default login screen.
Macintosh HD > System >Library >Desktop Pictures
I have done everything but it seems not working at all.
Besides, I can’t find that “red image” in the file “desktop pictures”.
Is there any possibility that file with the red image inside has change it’s place?
I had to delete the UUID named folder in /library/caches/desktop pictures and recreate it with the new lock screen.png before it would work.
Dosnt work on Big Sur. Turn of filevault and all screens switch to using your desktop wallpaper.
Must be a big somehow.
When a forced restart is applied, it will return to the original image.
This method should work for a computer with only one user. I have an Admin account and a Standard User account. The User account had the Desktop Pictures folder in Caches, the Admin one did not, I created the Desktop Pictures folder and added the UUID for the Admin account as a folder underneath. Plus I had FileVault turned off temporarily.
I then updated the lockscreen.png file in both accounts in their separate UUID folders and it works for changing the background on the screen you get after you select a user when you power up. This is the screen where enter your password after you select the user.
It unfortunately does not work for the very first logon screen that is displayed after powering up. Big Sur must have another location where it stores this particular wallpaper file with multiple user accounts. Crazy.
Any ideas about that location?
Can’t find where to change the dang thing! I can change the “login page” background and the sleep background, but I’m talking about the awful Red page you see when you turn on the iMac computer, where you choose the Icon of who will be logging in! It’s a awful Red color and I’ve Googled until my fingers are red and tried all the Fix-it’s but none actually work! HELP!
I followed the instructions and nothing worked. The login screen provided on Big Sur is horrible. It should be easy to change as desktop pictures.
Perfect, i followed the instructions and I have my new loginscreen after the restart. I created Desctop Pictures and included the folder with the UUID with the new picture. Thats all.
Josef Niggl
Thank you! Did not have multiple users and did not see the ugly pic and just a empty UUID folder and after unlocking the vault I added the picture I wanted to that UUID folder and it worked.
Dear friend,
I have to correct my message from the last week and congratulate you to showing the right path for changing Big Sur login screen.
When it had not work for me first, it was my fault because I did not realize that in the Desktop Pictures’ Info I did not ‘grant permissions Read & Write to user, admin, everyone’ – the permission was by default granted only for the administrator ….
Once I had done it, all worked as predicted by you.
Thank you again
Anton Peter