When I go to log in to my iMac, the picture associated with my account is a daisy. Yech. How do I change my user account photo or picture on my Mac OS X “Mavericks” system?
I know plenty of people who would be happy to have a cheery daisy as the picture associated with their accounts, actually. Ain’t nuthin’ wrong with no daisy! But… I can also understand if that’s not the best picture available for you and that you’d rather have a different picture — or maybe a photo of yourself — associated with your Mac OS X user account.
On the other hand, I will note that the only time I ever see the picture is on the login screen, so if you have a system that’s always just logged in to your account, you might not see that more than once or twice a month. So that’s not a lotta daisy to have to deal with… 🙂
There are a couple of ways to change this picture, but I’m going to show you the easiest way, via Google image search, because there are a zillion pictures out there you can utilize, rather than just the dozen or so from Apple HQ.
To start, here’s my login picture, the default “old school” soccer ball:
Not very glamorous, really. Further, I’m an avid Premier League soccer fan and they use a very different ball, just as most leagues and major competitions use custom balls. So let’s fix it!
First off, let’s go to images.google.com for Google Image Search:
There are tons of cheery, colorful results. A slight tweak, though, to add “2016” to ensure I’m looking at the very latest designs, and here’s just a subset of what’s shown:
I find an image that I like and click on it to expand it:
The easiest step from this point is to simply click and drag the image onto the Desktop (if you want, you can click on “View image” then save that version, but since we’re working with a small icon, it’s not that big a deal).
Saved? File on your desktop with the correct image or photo that you want? Great. Done with the Web browser.
Now go to the Apple Menu on the top left and choose “System Preferences…”:
Once you choose that, you’ll get a window with a few dozen different options. Look for this row:
Click on Users & Groups, the first one in this row, and you’ll see your own profile information including the photo, icon or picture that’s associated with your account:
It’s not obvious, but you can edit directly from this view, even without unlocking the padlock on the bottom. For example, move the cursor over the icon and an “Edit” pops up:
But don’t click on it. The process is even easier!
Simply drag the image file from your desktop onto the existing user account icon photo picture:
When you “let go” of the image, a tiny window pops up that lets you fine tune which portion of the image is used:
A round image and a round image filter are a match made in heaven, so there’s nothing to do.
A click on “Done” and…
That’s it. Now I have a cool red Premier League soccer ball icon with the lime green Nike swoosh as my account picture.
Disclaimer: The danger of using Google image search for this sort of task is that there’s no easy filter to avoid photos and pictures that are copyright or even trademarked. For an on-system icon like this example, it’s no big deal, but before you use images for any commercial purposes that you’ve found online, I strongly encourage you to identify the copyright owner and verify that you have permission to do what you desire and/or pay the necessary license fee.
Clear, simple, and easy to follow guide for how to change your log in screen icon. It took 30 seconds to complete! Thank you for a great help site.
Thank you SO much! I literally spent hours yesterday trying to figure this out. For some reason, I just couldn’t figure out how to use the apps in the menu (still not sure, but doesn’t matter now). I searched online and everyone always just said, “use the menu” and go from there. They didn’t walk me through it. Being somewhat familiar with my Mac, I knew the solution had to be much easier than I thought, but it never occurred to me to simply NOT click the “edit” button when trying to drag and drop. Geez. My switch from pc to mac last year has been quite the learning curve, mainly because I’m usually trying to make things too complicated. Thanks again.