Customizing Your Mac Login Screen

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to change the login options on your Login Screen including one thing that you're going to want to setup right away.

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The Login Screen is when you go to log into your Mac. It's when you wakeup your Mac or if you've got the screensaver running hit the spacebar and then you're asked to enter your password to login. There are several different ways you can configure that screen. So let's take a look at the different settings.

So your login screen probably looks something like this. You'll see an icon for every user on your Mac. I've got several here since I've several test accounts for making these tutorials. Maybe you'll see one for guest user as well. You'll see Sleep, Restart, and Shutdown buttons at the bottom of the screen. Then if you click on the user you want to login as you go to just that icon and a little enter password field. You enter the password there, press Return, and you're logged in. 

But there are ways to customize that and you can find those under the Apple Menu, System Preferences, and then go to Users and Groups. From there click on Login Options which is here on the left. Now all the options are going to be grayed out until you authenticate by clicking on the padlock and entering your password. Now you have all these options available. 

The first option here is Automatic login. You won't even have this option if you're using FireVault like you should on any MacBook. But even if you have the option you should have it turned off because you don't want to allow just anybody sitting at your computer to automatically log into any account. You want have to be able to enter your password. You should only have to do this occasionally and it's your main computer password so it should be quick and easy to enter. Of course if you've got a current MacBook Pro you can use Touch ID to login and also the Apple Watch allows you to login automatically. But having Automatic Login turned on with a user account selected is basically the equivalent to leaving the front door to your house or apartment unlocked. Maybe nobody's ever going to try it but if they wanted to come in it would be super easy for them. So you always want to have that turned off.

Next you've got Display login window as and you can choose either List of users or Name and password. I have it set to the most secure level which is Name and password. So List of users means that you're going to see a screen like this and it shows you all the users. So step one of getting into your computer is already kind of taken care of. They can see who the users are and all they have to do is enter a password. But if you have things set to Name and password you have no clue who the users are on the machine. You have to enter the user name, the short user name that is so it should be just a few characters to type. Maybe your first name for instance. Then enter a password.

Now you can also turn off the Sleep, Restart and Shut Down buttons that appear at the bottom of the screen. Now for most of us with our own personal Mac, of course, we want to have those there. It's useful when it's a login screen to be able to say no I want to shut it down or just put it to sleep; I don't want to login right now. Turning this off is primarily for public computers. So if you have a computer setup in a library or cafe or something like that and you don't want users to be able to shut it down then you want to turn this option off. You can still log into the account as usual and then choose Apple Menu and Sleep, Restart, or Shut Down there. You just can't do it unless you're logged in.

The Show input menu in login window is for switching languages. So if you're in a situation where you want the user to be able to switch languages before they login then the Input menu to be on will help them with that.

Now Password Hints only works if there is a password hint for that user. So, for instance, I can select a user here on the left. If I go to Reset the password you can see I can do New Password and Verify and I can enter any text I want in the Password hint here. Now naturally this degrades your security a bit because if there's a hint that can help you remember the password then perhaps it's not the best password to begin with. But in some home situations if you have trouble remembering a password and you want to set something simpler I suppose you can use the hint here and then in Login Options have password hints turned on. Password hints would appear then if you would click on the question mark in the password field or if you would enter a few times a wrong password then the hint comes up.

So those are the main options for the Login screen. But there's one more that I want to show you that you're going to want to set right away. It's not here in Users and Groups. It is in Security and Privacy. Under General there's some options here and you're going to want to Authenticate again by clicking on the padlock. This is the Show a Message when the screen is locked. This message will appear on your locked screen. It can be anything you want. So let's check it there. Hit the button. Now I can set the text to anything I want. So the thing that makes sense, especially if you've got a portable Mac like a MacBook, is you're going to want to maybe put your name and a phone number where you can be contacted. The idea being if somebody finds your MacBook they get to the locked screen. They can't get passed that but they will see this message there. Then it gives them the option to be able to locate you. So you can put a phone number there. Maybe an email address or maybe some other way of getting in touch with you.