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Login Window Background Picture Catalina

  • December 18, 2019
  • 10 replies
  • 10 views

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Hey all,
Just looking at Catalina and setting a custom login background window picture which has been very easy in the past and helps us quickly identify what machine goes to what building. I'm hopeful Apple would allow this part of the system to be modified with a config profile, but currently we would have to disable sip on all machines, which is not a pretty solution.

Anyone else trying to do this and maybe scripted a restart/disable/reenable of sip?

Gabe Shackney
Princeton Public Schools

10 replies

Hugonaut
Forum|alt.badge.img+15
  • Esteemed Contributor
  • December 18, 2019

edit: you are talking about wallpaper arent you?

I use nomad & nomad login to solve that issue, granted it doesnt cover filevault login window, once they get past that if a user logs out, you have complete control without disabling sip, nomad lets you add your own wallpaper & login window image.

______this is my original post
this is still working for me on catalina

modify $CURRENT_USER variable to whatever you want and you should be good to go

dscl . delete /Users/$CURRENT_USER jpegphoto
dscl . delete /Users/$CURRENT_USER Picture
dscl . create /Users/$CURRENT_USER Picture "/Your/Icon/Here.jpg"

kextcache -system-caches

Forum|alt.badge.img+18
  • Author
  • Esteemed Contributor
  • December 18, 2019

Sorry the actual background picture not the user picture.

Gabe Shackney
Princeton Public Schools


Hugonaut
Forum|alt.badge.img+15
  • Esteemed Contributor
  • December 18, 2019

updated my original post after realzing thats what you meant and then hazah you posted thats what you meant, @gshackney


Forum|alt.badge.img+18
  • Author
  • Esteemed Contributor
  • January 31, 2020

Would love to find a scripted way to tell a catalina machine to reboot and disable sip then switch the login background screen then reboot and enable sip...which I'm pretty sure is quite impossible now.

Gabe Shackney
Princeton Public Schools


Forum|alt.badge.img+18
  • Author
  • Esteemed Contributor
  • January 31, 2020

https://macreports.com/macos-catalina-how-to-change-the-login-screen-background/

If only I could automate....

Gabe Shackney
Princeton Public Schools


Forum|alt.badge.img+14
  • Valued Contributor
  • January 31, 2020

This is also super annoying. In Mojave, I just replaced Mojave.heic, packaged it up in Composer, & pushed with a reboot. UGHHHHHHHHHHH


Forum|alt.badge.img+5
  • New Contributor
  • February 13, 2020

Having the same issue. I could do this in Mojave just like jared_f says in the post above. Does anyone know if Jamf has anything in the works for resolving this?


Forum|alt.badge.img+20
  • Valued Contributor
  • February 26, 2020

@jared_f & @James.h I spoke with an Apple engineer via our enterprise AppleCare line last week on this topic and he said currently, there isn't an automated way of doing this. I explained to him they took this functionality away from us admins. If someone knows of a way to automate this, we would love to hear how it's done.


Hugonaut
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  • Esteemed Contributor
  • February 26, 2020

from what I understand, it can't be done without disabling sip - at this point our hands are tied until they release new functionality allowing ADE (DEP) devices via MDM to push a configuration profile managing those settings.


Forum|alt.badge.img+5
  • New Contributor
  • March 2, 2020

Thank you everyone! That's what I was thinking.