Hacking the OS X Login Window…
Published April 16th, 2006 in Apple, Noteworthy, Software, Technology
This is a cool hack. You can modify your OS X login window so that it displays the image of your choice and/or other text. It is quite simple to add the extra text, you just download a piece of software called Cocktail and navigate to the Login pane. The image modification is a bit more dificult.
For this, you’ll need to modify the LoginWindowUI.nib file. Before you get around to modifying the file that tells Mac OS X what images to display at login you’ll want a custom image for that file to actually use. A little pre-hack homework is in order. Create a 90 × 90 image (.tif format naturally) that you would like displayed in the Login Window and store it on the Desktop. The file you just created needs to be stored in a specific folder for the file you are going to modify to make use of said image so it is off to the Terminal.
As you can see, it isn’t really for the faint hearted, so a word for the wise: Take care and backup all the files you are going to modify. And remember, you are doing everything at your own risk! I didn’t change my image, as I quite like the Apple logo, but I did add that extra line of text…













