Every day you see the home screen when you turn on your Mac. We barely devote a few seconds of our time to it because we want to enter password to sign in so you can start working, browsing the web, or playing games. However, like many other features in macOS, you can customize home screen make it as personal as possible and thus enjoy all that it gives of itself.
In addition to the usual options you’ll find in System Preferences > Users & Groups > Launch Options, there are other things you can change. First, your avatar can be animated to respond to your password. You can also choose other wallpapers during login. You can even add a private message. And if you have a Mac and an Apple Watch, you can even unlock your mac bringing the smart watch closer to the computer.
Below is a collection aspects and options which you can change so that when you turn on your Mac, the look and feel of macOS matches your everyday needs. Security, accessibility, appearance, available actions and more. And if comfort is more important to you and there is no danger that someone will gain access to your Mac, we will tell you how to activate login auto.
What do you want to see on the main screen?
The first thing we need to do if we want to customize the macOS home screen is Launch parameters. We will find this menu in System Preferences > Users & Groups. To make changes, you must have Administrator rights. If you have them, click on the padlock to open it with your user password.
There are two ways to get started view available users. As a list or as a username and password. In the first option, you must select a user and enter a password. In the second option, both data must be entered. In addition, you can choose what to show on the main screen. The default buttons are sleep, restart and shutdown. You can also activate the Keyboard menu or password hints in case you forget.
Finally, if you go to Availability options… You can choose to show additional items when you turn on your Mac. In this case, these are special functions such as voice behind the scenewhich will read the elements on the screen aloud, increaseto enlarge parts of the screen, etc.
Show a message when you turn on your Mac
We’ve seen the usual options for changing the macOS home screen before, but we can go further. For example, enable personalized message as a greeting. You will see it every time you lock your Mac and the Start screen appears. Also after turning on your Mac after turning it off.
To customize this message, you need to go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General. Once there, activate the “Show message when screen is locked” option. In addition to activating it, you will need to enter Define message… and enter this message. In principle, there is enough space for writing a relatively long message. Its content is up to you.
Change your avatar or user picture
One of the most striking things about recent versions of macOS is the use of animated avatars for your user. I mean memoji. And that’s what avatars or static images are over. Now you can include your own Memoji and are ready to move, fall asleep or be sad if you make a mistake in the password. A detail that may seem absurd to you, but looks good from an aesthetic point of view.
If we go to System Preferences > Users & Groups you will see a list of existing users. Enter yours and click on your avatar icon. If you hover your mouse over it, a message will appear Edit. A window will appear with all the options you can choose to change your user icon. A smiley face, a picture or picture, a photo, suggestions for a lifetime… You can also take a picture with Camera.
The funniest version Reminders. You can choose one of the existing animals, or even better, create a new one by clicking on the + symbol. You have many elements to customize it and thus make it animated version of you. When you’re done, you can further customize it by selecting it and going to Pose. There you can select a specific grimace or feature that will be visible whenever your avatar appears. Serious, happy, angry, surprised… There are plenty to choose from. Finally, from Style you have multiple colors to change the background of your avatar. And to make the avatar appear larger or smaller inside its circle, you have a slider on the left.
Two curiosities. If you have a macOS user associated with your Apple account, both avatars will be in sync, so changing one will change the other. On the other hand, as I said, on the main screen your avatar will make gestures and faces depending on what you do or don’t do. For example, if you leave your screen locked and you’re away, if you enter the wrong password, if you’re logged in correctly…
Change Login Image
One of the most noticeable items on the Start screen when you turn on your Mac is the wallpaper. An image that is set by default and that we don’t know how to change. That is, from System Preferences > Desktop & Screensaver you can choose a background for your macOS desktop. In newer versions, this background may be static or dynamic.
But no sign of the home screen. To change this background, we will have to replace one file with another. Something that we must do with some care. First we open Seeker and tell it which path to take with a keyboard shortcut Shift + Command + G. In the window that opens, enter the path /Library/Caches/Desktop Images. Depending on your version of macOS, you’ll see either a folder or a file. Inside the folder you will see this file. In both cases, the specified file is a PNG image named lock screen.
Just in case, copy this image and paste it into another folder so that there is a backup copy. For example, we can rename it to “old-lockscreen”. The problem is that we will have to replace this file with another image that we want to use as the background. Try making it at least the same resolution as your Mac’s screen. To find out, go to Apple Menu > About This Mac > Displays.
You can use your own images or one of the official ones you can find if you go to System Preferences > Desktop & Screensaver and in tab Desktop double click the folder desktop images. Finder will open with official images. Copy the one you want and paste it into the folder /Library/Caches/Desktop Images. Then rename it to lock screen so that the new wallpaper appears the next time you log in.
How to enable automatic login
The macOS user and password system has a reason for being. But you may prefer convenience to security. If you are sure that no one will get physical access to your Mac, you can enable automatic login. This will prevent you from entering your password each time you turn on your Mac, and you won’t see the start screen either. But you’ll still be prompted for your password if you need to install or change something important on macOS.
AT System Preferences > Users & Groups > Launch Options you will find the “Auto login” option. we will change Disabled the user you want to log in as by default. If you have it, no problem. You will then need to enter your password to confirm the change. You can undo this change by disabling login from the same menu.
Source: Hiper Textual
