I’ve written about customizing the LoginWindow on a Mac a few times now. It’s hard to believe that I wrote https://krypted.com/mac-security/more-loginwindow-customizations-in-mac-os-x/ over ten years ago or https://krypted.com/mac-security/login-logout-hooks/ over 12 years ago.
One thing I hadn’t covered is seeing the name of the computer, IP address, and version of the OS by clicking on the clock in the upper right corner of the screen. This behavior is disabled by default and once enabled shows an item for 60 seconds as you scroll through them, which is a pretty nice troubleshooting option here and there. Use the following command to active the additional information, we’ll write the HostName key into the AdminHostInfo attribute in /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist. To do so, simply run defaults as follows:
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow AdminHostInfo HostName
You’ll need to reboot for the change to be active and then to undo if you ever don’t want to see this any more, simply delete the key, again using defaults:
sudo defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow AdminHostInfo
Other available options that you can put into com.apple.loginwindow include DSStatus, IPAddress, SerialNumber, SystemVersion, SerialNumber, and Time.
