Add Text to your Login Screen

If you’ve ever wondered how you can add Text to your login screen - there is actually a pretty simple solution. Why would you want to do this?

Well, if you work in an area where a confidentiality disclaimer or some other kind of important information needs to be address each time a user logs on - you might want to have it right there on the login screen. Or you might want to leave yourself a reminder - I don’t know - it’s up to you really…do you want this tip or not?

All you have to do is navigate to your hard drive then: Library> Preferences. Here you’ll find a file called com.apple .loginwindow.plist - you can edit this by opening it up in TextEdit.

The file will contain quite a bit of programmer tags in it. Just below the first one, insert the following:

<key>LoginwindowText</key>
<string>YOUR TEXT GOES HERE</string>

Obviously you’ll want to replace “YOUR TEXT GOES HERE” with whatever message you would like to add to your login screen.

Save the document.

Boom.

Done.

 
 

Submitted on September 29, 2008 at 12:01 am - Add Text to your Login Screen was written by Michael - There have been 10 comments - Categorized in General Tips

10 Responses to “Add Text to your Login Screen”

1. 
   Chet
   are there any screenshots? September 29th, 2008 at 6:24 am
   
   
2. 
   Travis
   When i open in TextEdit, it shows something different than what my quicklook shows. And what shows up in quicklook looks a lot like what you show to type, but what shows up in TextEdit looks much different, and there really isn't that much text.
   What's my problem? September 29th, 2008 at 11:16 am
   
   
3. 
   Rian
   A screen would be nice indeed. September 29th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
   
   
4. 
   Corey
   Could not find this file on my Macbook. Fairly new running OS 10.5.5. Found file: Com.Apple.LoginItems.Plist , but no file with Loginwindow.plist .
   
   Can this be verified? September 29th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
   
   
5. 
   Billy Cape
   Yeah that's what I was gonna say - good tip
   but I only really want to do this if I knew what it would look like first... September 30th, 2008 at 10:23 am
   
   
6. 
   Jim
   I can see the code in preview,but when I open the file in textedit there is only 1 line of text. doesn't match the preview. Any ideas? changed the permissions to read and write, still the same. September 30th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
   
   
7. 
   MBJ
   would not work for me...tried it 4 times... September 30th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
   
   
8. 
   Imagesprite
   I can't get it to work either, I find this vague "The file will contain quite a bit of programmer tags in it. Just below the first one,..."
   Here is what is in my file:
   bplist00Ø
     \lastUserName]autoLoginUserXlastUser_MCXLaunchOnLogout_autoLoginUserUID_RetriesUntilHint\SHOWFULLNAME]noPasswordKey[julesselmesXloggedIn 
   õ &4=Qdw„’ž§¨«­®
   
   ¯
   
   Where is the "first one" in that? October 8th, 2008 at 11:14 am
   
   
9. 
   grmagi
   I couldn't save it back into the .plist extension. It said I needed special permissions to do so. October 11th, 2008 at 6:09 am
   
   
10. 
    Paxswill
    It's in /Library/Preferences/, as in the Library in the root level of your hard drive, not the one in your Home folder. It seems Apple messed around with how preferences show up in TextEdit, but you can edit them using Property List Editor, part of the Developer Tools included on your Mac OS X install disc (either the one your bought, or the one that came with your computer. You can download it from Apple as well) October 29th, 2008 at 11:17 am
    
    

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