More information on the login panel
November 3rd, 2009 by Sandy Tanamas in
Mac OS X Tips
If you have a mobile device, such a MacBook, you’d better password protect it. When your device got stolen, at least they’ll have a hard time to see your private information.
What if you’ve just left the device somewhere, then someone found it and wanted to inform you? They can’t, because there is no information about you, and they can’t log into the system.
Here is how you can put more information on the login panel:
- Go to: /Library/Preferences
- Double click on: com.apple.loginwindow.plist, the Property List Editor.app will be launched.
- Click on ‘Add Child’
- Enter the following information: Key: LoginwindowText Type: String Value: If found, please contact…. yourmail@mail.com, your phone.
- Save it. Make sure you have enabled ‘Disable automatic login’ in System Preferences > Security
- Reboot. Just log out. Thanks Sebastian!
Please do not add $ sign in the Value field.
Thanks, this is very useful!
No reboot required, logout was sufficient for me.
Thanks for the feedback. I corrected the reboot part
great tip! adding such textual messages to the login dialog that get displayed when waking up from sleep state night be even more useful, how do we do that !? which pList file to hack?!?!?
ciao!
Hi Luca, I don’t think we can do that. I have been playing around with plist in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist but no luck.
Let me know if you nail one.