So you got that spanking new [Macbook Air?] laptop. So freaking light [yet so easy to get stolen, or lost]. You would like to somehow “watermark” your laptop so that if an Apple technician OR a good samaritan boots up your laptop, he/she would see a message on the login window….. so he would know who to return this laptop to.
Example: “This is a property of Mike Cannon, if found please contact me at +6012-345-6789. Thanks.”
Behold….
This is a tip I’ve submitted to Macosxhints.com but the editor insisted that it is a dupe when clearly the 2 years old hint does not work anymore on Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). Also, please note that I’ve only tested this method on Leopard but it should work on older versions of Mac OS X such as Tiger.
Before you apply this tip [especially on non-Leopard machines] please note that I take no responsibility whatsoever if your computer decides to explode into pieces or refuse to play your porn videos anymore.
- First, navigate to /Library/Preferences folder.
- Right click on com.apple.loginwindow.plist and click Get Info.
- Click on the lock icon on the bottom right (under Sharing & Permissions) and authenticate.
- Now, you should see that the ‘+’ button is un-greyed. Click the ‘+’ button and choose your account name. Give your account name ‘Read & Write’ priveledge. (NOTE: This will only give your account temporary read & write access to the current file until you log out.)
- Open this file with Property List Editor. (You need to install Xcode Tools from your OS X Installations discs if you don’t have this)
- Expand Root and click on Root. Click on New Child. Name this child ‘LoginwindowText’ without the quotes. Make sure the class for this child is String.
- Insert whatever message you would like your login window to display in Value. (NOTE: If you would like line breaks in your message, the workaround is to open a text editor such as TextEdit and craft your message there first, then paste it back into the Value box.)
- Save the plist file (Apple+S).
- Finally, log out and check to see if your login window now shows the text message! :)

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Thanks for this tip! It adds value to the Lock/ Logout function When and if ones laptop is lost or stolen
Indeed it does, if found in good hands ;)