Personalize your Mac’s Lock Screen in a few different ways to make it truly yours, both from aesthetics and usability perspectives.
Mac Lock Screen is what you see after logging into a user account and then locking your computer (Apple icon > Lock Screen).
Style the Lock Screen clock
Just like the iPhone and iPad Lock Screen clock, you can choose a different font style and weight (thickness) for your macOS Tahoe Lock Screen clock.
Go to macOS System Settings > Wallpaper > Clock Appearance to personalize this.
But note that, unlike iOS 26, you can’t make the clock bigger.
Show or hide the clock
If you want a clean screen with no clock, you have the option to hide it from the macOS Tahoe Lock Screen as well as the Screen Saver.
Return to System Settings > Wallpaper > Clock Appearance and select Never next to ‘Show large clock.’
Display a Lock Screen message
In addition to showing your favorite motivational quote, religious text, or something of importance, you can even use this feature to display your name, company name, mobile number, or email address so that when someone finds your lost MacBook, they can see this information on the login screen and contact you to return your computer.
You can set a Lock Screen message from Mac System Settings > Lock Screen > Show message when locked. This is also available on previous versions of macOS.
Set up beautiful login pictures
Instead of having an empty login picture for your admin account or other added user accounts, you can style them with beautiful pictures, Memojis, and more. This is one of the simplest and effective ways to enhance the look of your Mac’s login screen.
To set a user account picture, go to System Settings > Users & Groups and click the profile icon to change it.
Note: You can’t set up a profile picture for Guest User.
Change the wallpaper
Instead of looking at the default macOS wallpaper or seeing the same image over and over, you can set up a photo shuffle desktop background of various pictures, which will also appear on the Lock Screen. macOS Tahoe 26 has some awesome built-in options, so make sure to check them out.
Set a screen saver
When you’re away from your iMac, Mac mini, Mac Studio, or Mac Pro, you can set it to show a Screen Saver, which could be family pictures, words from the dictionary, music album art, etc. While this looks beautiful, it comes at the expense of power, and it’d be best not to use it on a MacBook.
Screen Saver appears in the Wallpaper Settings on macOS 26, and you can personalize it there: System Settings > Wallpaper > Screen Saver.
On a related note: 7 new ways to customize your iOS 26 Lock Screen