Unable to change Big Sur login user profile picture on M1 Air (Apple Silicon)

I used migration assistant to move several users from High Sierra machine to M1 Air. Users were non-admin.

I ran into a few minor bugs and glitches but only one I can't work around. One of my User Profile images displayed on login can't be changed. It's the "rose" default image and it's stuck on the pre-retina low res version.

Here's how it's supposed to work: https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/change-a-users-login-picture-mtusr002/mac

I can change it within the user account but the change doesn't propagate to the login screen. I've tried making user admin but still have same bug. Restart didn't change.

I suspect it's a permissions bug -- and there's no known way to repair permissions on an M1 Big Sur install.

Any ideas?

Posted on Jan 23, 2021 8:48 AM

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jfaughnan Author

Level 3

889 points

Posted on Jan 23, 2021 9:06 AM

Ok, I solved it. It looks like you SHOULD be able to do this from the user account, but you can't. I had to read the support article carefully. It can only be done from the Users and Groups part of an Admin account when the user is LOGGED OUT. I was able to update them all that way.

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Unable to change Big Sur login user profile picture on M1 Air (Apple Silicon)

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