Show System Info, Hostname, & OS X Version at Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Login Screen
Prior to Mac OS X 10.7, you used to be able to click on the “Mac OS X” text to display additional system information about the Mac, showing things like IP Address, OS X version and build number, and the machines Hostname. Apple pulled that ability out of Mac OS X Lion, but you can get part of it back with a defaults write command.
- Launch the Terminal and enter the following command:
- At the login screen, click on the Clock to see the system info at the login screen
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow AdminHostInfo HostName
You will need to enter the admin password when asked, and the setting will be in place the next time you access the Mac OS X Lion login screen. Remember, you have to click on the Clock for the hostname and version info to be visible on the login screen. The text will appear alongside the other menubar items.
Clicking to display the text is similar to past versions of Mac OS X, but clicking 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 hostname and version number yourself. There are more options regarding the Lion login window in the Server version of the OS, so maybe some of those will be able to move over to the Client version too.
[…] Seguramente te habrás percatado que con la nueva interfaz de Acerca de este Mac, has perdido la funcionalidad de ver rápidamente la IP, versión de OS X y build del sistema. Pero el acceso rápido a esta información no ha desaparecido, sino que ha cambiado de sitio y viene desactivado por defecto. […]
Shame they’ve disabled this. It made remote support much easier.
This also works under SL (10.6.8).
I can do this without entering the defaults write but it only shows version number.
Clicking the CLOCK? WTF that’s a first, who would think to click on the time to get their build number?
BTW you can show the IP with those one:
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow AdminHostInfo IPAddress