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You are here: Home / How to / macOS Catalina: How To Change The Login Screen Background

macOS Catalina: How To Change The Login Screen Background

Last updated on December 18, 2019 By Serhat Kurt 48 Comments

You can change the login screen wallpaper image that appears when you start your Mac to any image you want to use. We previously wrote about how you can change the login screen image in macOS Mojave. It seems that it is a little harder to change this background image for the login screen wallpaper now but it is still possible. You may want to do this so that you do not have to stare at the generic Catalina image every time you type in your password.

Catalina login screen

macOS Catalina custom login screen

Here is how:

Please follow each step carefully:

1. Find or create the image you want to use. You can find it online. You can create one yourself. You can modify using the Preview app or using any other photo editing apps. This will be your login screen. I created a basic solid black image. See below. Save this image anywhere you want on your computer (e.g, Desktop etc). Just make sure that you can easily find it as we will need this later. There are different types of image formats. Your image can be a JPG or PNG (the most common types). Catalina Heic Image

2. Rename this file as Catalina.heic (HEIC files)

You can rename it by selecting it and hitting the ‘return’ key and entering this new name.

Rename as Catalina.heic

3. Now we will disable System Integrity Protection. Do not worry we will re-enable it after we are done. And this can be done via Recovery Mode. Here is how:

  • Turn off your computer
  • Turn on your Mac and immediately press and enter the Command (⌘)-R keys. Keep these keys when you see a login or the recovery mode screen.
  • You will be asked to enter your password
  • After starting up from macOS Recovery, click Utilities (from the top menu)Recovery mode terminal
  • In terminal enter the following command and press enter (this will turn off System Integrity Protection)
csrutil disable
  • Restart your Mac by going to the Apple menu and Restart.

4. When your computer restarted, open Terminal (Applications / Utilities or you can use Spotlight) and enter the following command and hit enter:

 sudo mount -t apfs -wu /dev/disk1s5 /Volumes

Make sure that you replace ‘disk1s5’ with the identifier for your system. If asked, enter your passcode. if you do not know this, open Disk Utility (Applications / Utilities or you can use Spotlight) and select your disk (sidebar) and then click the Info icon.

Disk Utility

5. Again, in Terminal enter the following command and press enter:

sudo mount -wu /; killall Finder

6. Now go to Finder, click Go and then Go to Folder and enter /System/Library and click Go.

Go To Folder

7. Click Desktop Pictures folder

8. There you will see a lot of images. Find Catalina.heic and rename this file like Catalina-original.heic, (just in case if you want to change it back).

9. Now copy and paste the heic image that we created (step # 2) in here (System > Library >Desktop Pictures)

10. Again open the Terminal app and enter the following code and hit enter:

diskutil apfs updatePreboot /

Wait until the Terminal app completes the process.

11. Restart your Mac, and now you will see that your login wallpaper is changed.

Important: Now, let’s re-enable System Integrity Protection as this will help protect your Mac from malicious software. Here is how:

  1. Restart your Mac in Recovery Mode (see the step above #3)
  2. Open the terminal and enter the following command and hit enter:
csrutil enable

Restart your computer. Now System Integration Protection is enabled. You can check this by going to the System Information app (Applications / Utilities). Click Software and check to see if you see this “System Integrity Protection: Enabled”

Filed Under: How to Tagged With: Catalina, login

Comments

  1. Brett Lamb-Shine says

    November 16, 2020 at 7:11 pm

    This worked a treat under Catalina, but not Big Sur. All okay up to Step 5:

    sudo mount -wu /; killall Finder

    where I get the response

    mount_apfs: volume could not be mounted: Permission denied
    mount: / failed with 66

    Really appreciate it if anyone can help. I hate the Log in BG…

    Cheers from London, Brett

    Reply
  2. Oliver says

    August 25, 2020 at 6:08 pm

    I’ve found a solution which I have written in here.

    which I have written in here: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/400036/333137

    i think in most cases it is the missing of a folder in “/Library/Caches/Desktop Pictures”

    this must be created with the name of the user’s UUID. In addition, the rights for the system to write must be set.

    after that macOS should put a “lockscreen.png” file for the login there again.

    Should work for Catalina and Mojave.

    Reply
  3. xGenius says

    August 15, 2020 at 8:13 pm

    Great it works thanks, but please how to reverse this ?? I’m still getting System mounted on each start. any solutions ?

    Reply
  4. TNE says

    July 22, 2020 at 3:44 pm

    This worked perfect for me. MacBook Pro 16’ 2019 …. thank you!!

    Reply
  5. Andrew Swift says

    June 9, 2020 at 7:55 am

    @athelstane thanks for writing it out more clearly, it was a big help. You need to add a space before /Volumes in step 10.

    Reply
    • Andrew Swift says

      June 9, 2020 at 7:59 am

      Also, I had to use a single slash instead of /[system ID] in line 17.

      Reply
  6. Rich DeSanti says

    May 31, 2020 at 1:18 am

    So I printed this out and it worked perfectly!
    Thanks for your help.

    Reply
  7. Chris W says

    May 3, 2020 at 7:27 am

    Having chosen to display, at random, one of my own photos from a folder as a desktop picture, OSX has arrogantly chosen to use the first in alphabetical order as the logon photo. So the procedure listed above is simply not relevant. I need to experiment further. Pretty poor of Apple not to do make this is simple process.

    Reply
  8. athelstane says

    May 2, 2020 at 10:47 pm

    How To Change The Lock Screen
    1) Select or create an image and name it: Catalina.heic
    2) Go to: Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility
    a) Select Macintosh HD
    b) Click on Info
    c) Read BSD device node (mine says disk1s1)
    3) Shutdown computer
    4) Restart computer – holding down the [command] + [R] keys until it boots
    5) Select admin account and enter in the password
    6) Click on utilities and open Terminal
    7) Enter: csrutil disable and press return – you have now disabled the integrity
    8) Restart computer
    9) Go to: Finder > Applications > Utilities > Terminal
    10) Enter: sudo mount -t apfs -wu /dev/[system ID]/Volumes
    11) Enter: sudo mount -wu /; killall Finder
    12) Go to: Finder > Go > Go to Folder
    13) Enter: /System/Library/Desktop Pictures
    14) Select image: Catalina.heic and rename it: old.Catalina.heic
    15) Drag-and-drop the image you named: Catalina.heic into the open folder
    16) Go to: Finder > Applications > Utilities > Terminal
    17) Enter: diskutil apfs updatePreboot /[system ID] and wait for it to finish
    18) Close all open windows
    19) Shutdown computer
    20) Restart computer – holding down the [command] + [R] keys until it boots
    21) Select admin account and enter in the password
    22) Click on utilities and open Terminal
    23) Enter: csrutil enable and press return – you have now enabled the integrity
    24) Restart computer

    Reply
    • Calvin MacOS Expert says

      August 7, 2020 at 4:24 am

      the lock screen is a same as your Desktop Picture in System Prefences>Desktop & Screen Saver>Desktop

      Reply
  9. Nils says

    April 11, 2020 at 6:36 am

    Worked like a charm. But is ist correct that the desktop picture has changed to the same one I just for the login screen? I had wished for two separate ones.

    And one more question, doing all that my login password doesn’t show any signs any more. I can type them but they remain “blind” like as you are typing the password in terminal

    Reply
  10. David Stafford says

    April 10, 2020 at 4:25 pm

    This worked great, but within a few days, my system became unstable and my computer began to crash weekly. I can’t be sure this was the problem, of course, but after a couple of months I had to reinstall the OS. Just sayin’.

    Reply
    • Charlotte says

      June 30, 2020 at 10:56 pm

      Me too actually.

      Reply
    • Michelle L says

      August 8, 2020 at 7:37 pm

      I have been loving the HEIC images. And, I notice a direct correlation to my system being *weird*, and then crashing (startup disc becomes corrupted, yikes flashing folder with a qusetion mark), and I have to reinstall OS. I haven’t done this bit, but just using custom HEIC images for whismy and fun.

      Reply
  11. TG says

    March 15, 2020 at 5:02 pm

    Thank you! You are the man/woman. I’ve been wanting to do this for a while.

    Reply
  12. Gabor says

    March 7, 2020 at 9:26 am

    Unfortunately, it doesn’t work on my mid 2012 Macbook Pro. As soon as I turn on the FileVault encryption, the login background goes into plan grey and no way to turn it back to Catalina’s wallpaper. While the SSD is not encrypted, the background is fine. I tried your steps to check if the files are there and not corrupted or something.. but everything looks fine. So I have no idea why it is happening.

    Reply
    • BR says

      August 2, 2020 at 7:59 pm

      I have the exact same problem – mine’s a mid-2012 as well.

      Reply
  13. JJ says

    March 1, 2020 at 2:37 am

    Dear John- Switch to Boot camp and Windows 10? Are you kidding? Get off this Mac conversation and go back to your clunky operating system of choice.

    Reply
  14. Margie says

    February 17, 2020 at 10:48 pm

    I appreciate the detailed instructions; however, this did not work for me. Any suggestions would be most appreciated. My guess is the name of the disc is the problem? The hard drive is disc0, there is a ‘container disc1’ that has ‘Macintosh HD’ identified as ‘disc1s2’. first I tried sudo “mount -t apfs -wu /dev/disk1s2/Volumes” and then “sudo mount -t apfs -wu /dev/disk0/Volumes”.

    Suggestions are most appreciated 🙂

    Reply
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