How can I change the login screen background on Mavericks?

Just don't forget that replacements have to be png format too.

OK, I just tried it and it does work. The Apple logo is replaced by my custom image which happens to be much larger so it fills up the entire screen. However under Mountain Lion, it was possible to replace the background and keep the Apple logo. But we're getting there. Thanks for the tip.

I also just noticed that the custom image hides the "Sleep", "Restart" and "Shutdown" buttons at the bottom of the screen. So if you want them to show, you must size your custom image according to your screen resolution. Say your screen is 900 pixels high, you may want to size your image to 800.

I hope we will soon find a solution with having to do these workarounds.

I looked through every .png file in system/library and didn't find a file that looked like the Mavericks login background. Is it possib;e they are no longer using an image and are just filling with that color?

Thanks for the how-to, Konrad...it works for me too.

Here's a photo of my login screen showing how I had to (approximately) crop the custom image to show the "Sleep", "Restart" and "Shutdown" buttons at the bottom of the screen.

THe image is centralised around the location of the original apple logo, not the centre of the screen. Makes positioning/sizing the image a little tricky but definitely possible.

Using a PNG with a transparency gradient at the bottom looks quite effective. For example, check out the image linked below:

http://cl.ly/S9ij

PSD file for editing attached here:

http://cl.ly/SAsg

Konrad,

Are you replacing appleLinen@2x.png and appleLinen.png?

Hey Guys,

I have looked at this solution but when I go tto the listed directory, the directory is empty......

I must be doing something wrong....

Willo

You need to replace apple_s1.png | apple@2x.png | apple.png | apple_s1@2x.png.

I think you can get the whole thing to be covered by your custom image/background, but I believe it’s a little trickier than simply creating an image the same size as your screen because the image is not centred on the login page - it is slightly higher and is in fact centred around the position of the old Apple logo that you are replacing. As a result, you need a wallpaper that is longer than what you might expect but just as wide.

For example, my screen is 1440x900. Replacing the images with an image that is also 1440x900 leaves a grey bar of around 300px at the bottom of the screen. The gradient helps to blur this bar in, but it still doesn’t look great. I think in this case to get rid of the bar you would need an image that is an additional 2x300 (600px) in height, so a 1440x1500 image would probably do the job.

This is all just a theory at this point…but it seems to make sense to me.

Well this is how mine looks: http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=5cd14y&s=5#.Um5tgJHRq2w

The sleep, shut down ... buttons are not seen, but they work, so if you are the guy who is using them really a lot then you kinda know where to click. As myself I don't use them so it's fine for me.

Yes this is what I've got (sorry for the bad photo). Background image fading out so you can still see the buttoms at the bottom.

http://cl.ly/SBQx

Dev

I did this, exactly per your instructions, and it didn't work for some reason. My login/lock background is still the same 'ol grey.

Why is that?