Add a Message to the Login and Lock Screen in Mac OS X

Jul 28, 2011 - 14 Comments

Message at Login and Lock Screen in Mac OS X

OS X Lion and beyond brings a nice new feature to login and lock screens that allow you to display a message underneath the login panel. This is visible to everyone and it makes for a great place to put either a generic personalization or better yet, a lost & found message.

How to Add a Login & Lock Screen Message to OS X

Note that for the lock screen message to be displayed you also must have the ‘Require password’ feature turned on in the Security panel, then:

  • Open up System Preferences and click on the “Security & Privacy” icon
  • Select the “General” tab and then click the little lock icon in the lower left corner of the window, enter the admin password when asked
  • Check the button next to “Show a message when the screen is locked” and type your login and lock screen message in the box below
  • Click the lock icon again to set the changes and close out System Preferences

If you want to confirm the change, activate a screen saver with a sleep corner or lock your Mac screen, just be sure that you require a password or you won’t see your message. You can see what this looks like in the screenshot above and the closeup image below:

login message in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion

Having a message on your lock screen is a great loss prevention and general anti-theft measure, since anyone who gets the Mac into their hands later will see the message and if they have a conscience, will hopefully call the number you set on the screen. This could also help if you ever accidentally misplaced a Mac laptop, and is a great addition to setting an “If Found” message as the iPhone lock screen wallpaper which was suggested by Apple a few years ago.

For those wondering, the screenshot background is the Fliqlo flip-clock screen saver, and it works fine in OS X 10.7. This tip works in OS X 10.7 or later and has been confirmed to work with 10.8 Mountain Lion.

Related articles:

Posted by: Paul Horowitz in Mac OS X, Tips & Tricks

14 Comments

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  1. Mike says:

    I like this one a lot. I learn something new every day here, thanks.

  2. Name (required) says:

    “and if they have a conscious,”
    If they have a conscious what? What is it and why does it need to be awake?

  3. flyshoo says:

    I work for a school and I miss the ability to ask users to click on the login screen for there ip address. Is there a way to add this function back to the login screen?

  4. Brad says:

    How did you get the time in the back, thanks?

  5. warmz says:

    gr8 .. woooooooooooosh .. Ooo`WOoooooooop :]

  6. Lippy says:

    Just wondering how you changed your login window background, I know it’s fliqlo but does it update? Or is it just a static image?

    • OSXDaily says:

      It updates and runs like a normal screen saver, that’s actually the lock screen though and not the login window. But you raise a good question, so we will look into the ability to set a screen saver as the login window background, that would be a cool trick.

  7. MU says:

    This feature’s also attainable on OS10.6 and lower – using CLi – (i.e in Terminal):-
    sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow LoginwindowText “Prop of OSXDaily.com, if found call 415-555-1212″

    NB: CLi must all be on one line!

  8. [...] on the clock is somewhat unintuitive. Ideally, you could show this data in the same way you can add a message to the Lion login screen, but there are currently no known methods to do that unless you want to just manually add the [...]

  9. [...] an ownership name, email address, and phone number on the login screen and screen saver. It only takes a minute to configure login messages in OS X, and even less time to set messages as your screen saver. Do [...]

  10. [...] data on your machine that you want to keep from prying eyes. Another very worthwhile endeavor is to add a login message to OS X, this can include things like identifying information of the Mac, or better yet, ownership details [...]

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