Introduction: How to Customize Your Mac OS X Yosemite

Feel your Mac looks like everyone else's? Let's customize it!

To my opinion, Mac OS X looks great with no doubts. But sometimes everyone wants something unusual and original, and it will take you about few minutes for setup. Of course I will provide you with specific common tips within OS X capabilities, but believe me that it will be enough.

Step 1: Toolbar:

There is no need to keep the toolbar all the time on the desktop: you can hide and show it as well as move it to the right or left side. Besides, you can resize it.

  • Open System Preferences > Dock;

Step 2:

  • To change the size of the toolbar, drag the “Size” button and choose the appropriate size. Or you can just drag the toolbar (place marked with a yellow stripe) and change the size much easier;

Step 3:

  • Move down and choose where you would like to locate your Dock: right, left, or down. Here you can also choose an option “Automatically hide and show the Dock”, just mark the blank space on the right.

Step 4: Customize Login Screen:

  • Command ⌘ + Shift ⇧ + G > type /Library/Caches > press Go;
  • Remove existing login screen wallpaper to another folder and remember the location, so that you’ll have a backup of the original if you ever want to revert to the default login screen wallpaper
  • Choose the picture which you want to set as a login screen (PNG format) and rename it to com.apple.desktop.admin.png > copy it into the Cachesfolder.

Then just restart your Mac to apply the changes.

Step 5: Customize the Login Screen Logo:

Probably you tried to change the login screen logo via System Preferences, and I guess that nothing happened. So did I. But I know the way to customize it.

  • Prepare a PNG logo with the size 428 X 248.
  • You will need 4 files with the following names: apple.png, apple@2x.png, apple_s1.png, and apple_s1@2x.png.
  • Drag all renamed files to /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/LoginUIKit.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LoginUICore.framework/Resources/. Apply to replace all of them.

Step 6: Choose Login Items:

- Open System Preferences > select Users & Groups > press Login Items button > add/remove login items which you need.