Mac OS X Lion can display messages that require acknowledgement prior to the standard login screen appearing. For administrators, this allows a user agreement or acceptable use policy to be displayed before users can login, and for personal use it lets users include a customized message before logging into a Mac.
How to Create & Set a Login User Agreement in Mac OS X
For OS X 10.7 or later:
- Open TextEdit and create an RTF containing the the user agreement login message, save this file named as “PolicyBanner” and be sure the extension is .rtf or .rtfd
- From the Finder, hit Command+Shift+G to bring up the “Go To Folder” window and enter the following path:
/Library/Security/
- Copy the previously created PolicyBanner.rtf to the /Library/Security/ folder
- Authenticate the file transfer by entering the administrators password
Note: /Library/ is different than the user ~/Library/, with the former being system-wide and the latter being user specific.
To confirm the policy banner is active, log out and log back into the Mac. The user agreement will popup before the standard login screen, and must be accepted before a user can login to the Mac.
