Trying to change my user "avatar/icon/picture" displayed at the login screen. Usually this is a straight forward process from SysPref --> Users & Groups --> click on the picture -> edit picture -> choose.
However I've either gone blind or the "edit picture" option is just missing from OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion which seems odd. Anyone else have this issue or am I just crazy?
Mac mini (Mid 2011), OS X Mountain Lion
Just click on the picture you want to be your new picture.
I want a custom picture. Not one of the stock or to take one with my webcam. There is usually an easy, straight-forward way to do this, but I no longer see it. As you can tell above, the current user picture is not part of the stock list, but there is no visible way to change it to another custom picture.
Go to the folder where your custom picture is and drag and drop it to your user (same window you showed, i.e. "User and Groups").
That's really unintuitive. There's no prevelant documentation to explain that functionality. They should at last offer the old way as well.
But thanks! 😀
Do it like what you normally will for 'Cut & paste' for changing folder's icon on the 'Recent'. That works for me.
SettingDawn wrote:
That's really unintuitive. There's no prevelant documentation to explain that functionality. They should at last offer the old way as well.
Drag-and-drop is UNINTUITIVE? Most people would immediately hit on that to change the picture to something else. And the whole idea of intuitive is that you don't need docuentation to tell you how to do it.
Drag and drop is intuitive from nothing. This is a change of an expected behavior to something very different from before. No first-time pop-up message for returning users, no backup "edit picture" button, nothing. That is poor design. Sure, now that I know about, it works great, but it should be made clear before the user gets to this point.
I agree fully about the new way to do this being really unintuitive. I bought an MBA 13 two weeks ago, which came with Lion installed. Setting it up was relatively straightforward, even though the old Macs in our house were running Leopard, so I had some learning to go through.
The MBA died after 10 days, before I had a chance to install Mountain Lion. I replaced it with a MBP 13 today. The Apple support information, OS X Mountain Lion: Add a user picture, still describes the procedure for Lion, makes no mention of this, and is useless. I just wasted an hour trying to figure this out, before stumbling on the answer in this thread (thank you, Fernando.S, for the answer).
At the moment, I am disgusted with Mountain Lion, which has thrown up one obstacle after another.
Err, no they wouldn't 😕 They would look for a browse button in order to browse for an image on their filesystem.
Wow, I am brand new to the Mac World, have had my MBP w/Retina display for 3 days now. The folks at PeachMac did the original set up of Parallels, Win 7 etc and data exchange for me. There was a generic pic in as my user pic and I of course wanted to change it. Found users edit etc no problem. clicked around everywhere to try to chance the pic, dbl clicked on pic, clicked in blank spots in Recents. ONLY options appeared to be their stock photos or to take a picture of myself with the computer. Why no 'add' or 'browse'? Then I thought, 'Ah, drag and drop, that seems to work for a lot of stuff here'. so I opened pictures, opened the folder and it wouldn't allow me to drag the pic!! So I tried copy/paste, it wouldn't let me paste it. SOOOO I tried pasting it to the desk top. Success. From THERE I could drag it into the Recents and choose it. Not intuitive at all. 😟 But DONE! 🙂
Drag and drop is intuitive from nothing. This is a change of an expected behavior to something very different from before. No first-time pop-up message for returning users, no backup "edit picture" button, nothing. That is poor design. Sure, now that I know about, it works great, but it should be made clear before the user gets to this point.
I agree fully about the new way to do this being really unintuitive. I bought an MBA 13 two weeks ago, which came with Lion installed. Setting it up was relatively straightforward, even though the old Macs in our house were running Leopard, so I had some learning to go through.
The MBA died after 10 days, before I had a chance to install Mountain Lion. I replaced it with a MBP 13 today. The Apple support information, OS X Mountain Lion: Add a user picture, still describes the procedure for Lion, makes no mention of this, and is useless. I just wasted an hour trying to figure this out, before stumbling on the answer in this thread (thank you, Fernando.S, for the answer).
At the moment, I am disgusted with Mountain Lion, which has thrown up one obstacle after another.
Just so you know, this is not the new way of doing it. It's always worked this way. And the method used, dragging and dropping, has been an essential part of the Mac OS since 1984.
It's probably not intuitive to some ex-windows users, because in 1984, they were still using menu commands in DOS. IMHO
Actually, even though I am a brand new convert, I am really liking the drag and drop for so many things, just have to train my thinking to go to that first. But can someone tell me why I couldn't drag and drop from 'pictures' but I could from desktop?
From "pictures," the folder, normally has a library file rather than individual pictures. Any picture file should be able to be dragged and dropped.
I have SO much to learn, so far I have found that accessing pictures is the most confusing item I have run into. If the picture files aren't picture files there, then WHERE do I find the 'usable' files? Sorry for such a dumb question, but it really has me flumoxed I can't keep putting stuff on the desktop as a go around, I need to find the RIGHT way to do them. I am sure that once I learn better how to navigate all will be well, but until then I'm pulling my hair out on some things. 😕 LOL Thank you for your response!
Depending on whether you use iPhoto or Apperture, they will be displayed by those applications. Open iPhoto to see if you any photos there.
changing user icon in OS X 10.8; "edit picture" button missing!?
