Here’s a simple Mac Treat that will make you look like you’re a power user. You know that standard image you see when you boot up your Mac? Well, you can change it—no Terminal commands involved—whether you want it to suit your personality, identify your machine or just because you’re bored.
10.5 Leopard and 10.6 Snow Leopard:
- Go to Your Hard Drive > System > Library > CoreServices. You’ll find DefaultDesktop.jpg; this is the startup image.
- Drag it to your desktop (or other folder) to save it in case you ever want to put it back.
- Find the image you want to replace it with and rename it DefaultDesktop.jpg (the new image must be a JPG).
- Drag your new DefaultDesktop.jpg into the CoreServices folder.
Upon restart, you’ll see your customized image!
Note: If you are using 10.4 or previous (I think this is applicable back to at least 10.2), this trick will still work. However, the name and location are different; go to Your Hard Drive > Library > Desktop Pictures and replace Aqua Blue.jpg.
Note #2: This may go without saying, but you will need to make sure you’re the admin user to you know, go changing things and stuff.
