Login Screen Screen Saver, Custom Classic Images?

Hey guys

Long story short we have multiple macs that are front facing in the company and as the boss likes to walk guests through our offices frequently, he wishes for each mac to be running a screen saver when it is not in use. The screen saver is very simple. A few images that relate to our company that I have easily set this up using the "Classic" screen saver through system preferences. Some users though, require their Mac to be logged out when they leave their desk. The problem I face is that I cannot change the login screen saver.

I have found this article https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202223 which has a few steps on how to configure the login screen saver locally using terminal. Although there is no information here whether the "Classic" screen saver is compatible, and if it is how would i go about customising it with my images.
After digging around a little more I did find a few more pages showing you how to custom write a message "You can set the screen saver message from the command line with this string

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Basic MESSAGE “Your message here”

Which leads me to believe the screen saver here does have some level of customisation if you know the right way to do it.

Does anyone here have any idea how and if this would be possible to accomplish, my personalised images in the classic screen saver to be used at the login screen.
My boss is progressively losing his cool more and more each time he sees that generic screen saver on one of his machines. It's difficult to explain to him that we can't customise a screen saver on the login screen due to restrictions of the OS. My job is at risk here guys haha
All jokes aside I do hope someone is able to help because as each day goes on i'm slowly accepting that it may just not be possible.

A couple of things. If a user is logged in, you can set the screen saver to come on and not have the display go top sleep. This will allow you to show a series of images and have access to the entire variety of screen savers on the system (Apple provided or 3rd party). However, if no one is logged in and the machine is sitting at the Login screen, you are seriously limited in the types of screen savers you can use due to security reasons. So screen savers that want to randomize things aren't supported, neither are screen savers that want to access images since you aren't logged in, you shouldn't have access.

You will be limited to screen savers that show lights, time, computer name or a message bouncing around.

So, even if you got the screen saver to do what you want, you will not be able to make it show the images.

Welcome to our forums.

The article you refer to above is out of date and should not be used to customize a screen saver. You didn't tell us which version of macOS your Macs are running as that would help in trying to track something down. Older Macs running an older version of macOS were easier to customize because that was before Apple implemented System Integrity Protection (SIP).

What you're looking for is a screen saver that can be customized with your company logo and also offers password protection to unlock the screen. You might try a Google search to see if there is something that will work. I checked the Mac App Store which has loads of screen savers, however, none of them offer what you're looking for.

Hey guys. Thanks for making me feel welcome

Ashwin thanks for the info, I figured this would be difficult/impossible due to security reasons of the machine.

And chscag thanks for your reply also, the mac OS i'm working with is the latest at time of writing (Mojave 10.14.3) I'll keep digging around like you mentioned.
Even though the article is out of date it has managed to work to change the login screen saver to other supported savers, and within that article i did notice it mention something that .slideSaver bundles are supported. Any info on what these are/how to create them? No harm in giving it a go i suppose.

Nathan

Some users though, require their Mac to be logged out when they leave their desk. The problem I face is that I cannot change the login screen saver.

Click to expand...

Why not just switch users instead of completely logging out, and have it run using a Demo or Tester username user with it set to run a screensaver or photoshow or whatever???




- Patrick
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pm-r said:

Why not just switch users instead of completely logging out, and have it run using a Demo or Tester username user with it set to run a screensaver or photoshow or whatever???




- Patrick
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Click to expand...

That would be the logical answer right ? Here's where the problem extends beyond technical difficulty to user interaction. A lot of these guys are really old school and getting them to do anything outside of what they feel comfortable with is like driving a nail through my foot. It was tough enough to get them to use Macs as they're all PC guys (that was a miracle in itself right there), so not matter what I tell them, or how I explain it, when they are done they log out and walk away. I've tried to tell them logging out is not necessary, as I've set the screen saver to 1 minute with immediate password required. Though due to muscle memory and hints of superstitious caution surrounding potential hacking, the accounts always seem to be logged out. If i'm not in the office to log back into the Demo user account (or theirs for that matter) then it stays on the login screen until they come back. Also, that's not even taking into consideration the explosion of confused cries for help when one of them logged into the demo user by accident. "ALL MY FILES HAVE VANISHED" lets just say despite my best efforts to explain what a demo user is, I likely won't try that avenue again haha.

Nathan

(I don't mean to sound awful either, these guys are a great bunch and fantastic at their job, just not so computer savvy)

Yikes, either I'm missing some of the simple basic security methods and enabling and keeping security and privacy access and some slideshow running etc, with just what Apple supplies is beyond the users capabilities, then even if they are a nice bunch, it seems like they have some serious learning problems which seems rather unfortunate.

So no sense mentioning any other suggestions it seems.





- Patrick
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Patrick:

Many businesses and agencies require a specific screen saver or login screen. Usually, it's proprietary to the particular company and serves several purposes: Security and uniformity. It seems to me that the OP should be able to find something that will work or some enterprising programmer familiar with macOS who will do it for their company.

@chscag

Patrick:
Many businesses and agencies require a specific screen saver or login screen.

Click to expand...

Thanks, Charlie, and I can appreciate that fact, and I tend to agree with your comments above, but one shouldn't even need a special Mac programmer I would think, just using what the Mac OS can provide. Maybe even some AppleScript at the most that may need some guru's help and assistance.

But I have been racking my brain for the name of the utility that could modify the display with a custom scene or logo that was intended to be invoked when the user wasn't logged in. Damed if I can think of its name, but that was not its main feature either.

It could be used to create a custom screen, like with the name of the user, phone number or logo etc. Does that ring any bell for you or anyone else?

Then just invoke it when logging out, regardless of method used.

Now we just need to get some thinking hats on.





- Patrick
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I found this with a quick search. Will it do? https://apple.stackexchange.com/que...e-the-login-screen-background-in-macos-mojave