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[Guide] How to Change About This Mac Picture on macOS

Joined
Oct 16, 2016
Messages
269
Motherboard
Dell 7560
CPU
i7 7500u
Graphics
HD 620 & 940MX (1920x1080)
Mac
  1. iMac
  2. MacBook Pro
Mobile Phone
  1. iOS
macOS Mojave has made some changes on the way picture is packaged and now it is using a "container" named Assets.car to store some images.
This conteiner can be found navigating with finder to your Applications folder -> Utilities -> System Information application.
You need to Right-click the application and select Show Package Contents.
Make a backup of Assets.car and now we are going to unpack this with cartool. This utility is easily compiled using Xcode, but for those who don't want or don't have time to spend I will put a pre-compiled one here. Unzip it on your desktop, put a copy of Assets.car on your desktop too and make a folder there too where files will be unpacked. I will call this folder Assets.
To unpack just open a terminal windows and navigate to desktop and unpack it with cartool.
Code:
cd ~/desktop
./cartool Assets.car Assets
Now you should have a folder called Assets with 08 png images: AppleCareBox.png, [email protected], AppleLogoSmall.png, [email protected], Completed.png, [email protected], SystemLogo.png and [email protected]
Now we are going to repack Assets.car with a new System logo image.
Open Xcode and open a new project. Chose macOS and Cocoa App

Cocoa App.png


Click on next, give it a Product Name, Organization Name and Organization Identifier and click on Next and Create.
On the left bar, click on Assets.xcassets. Delete Appicon on the second bar and right-click there creating a new Image Set.
Name it AppleCareBox. Click on it and move the images of AppleCareBox.png to 1X box and [email protected] to 2X box.
Do the same with AppleLogoSmall, Completed and SystemLogo. Don't forget to change SystemLogo.png and [email protected] with the picture you want to put on About This Mac.

systemlogo.png



Now just click on Product -> Build
On the left Tab click on Product, and Right-Click on you App and on Shown in Finder.
Right Click on you APP, and on Show Package Contents - Contents - Resources
Now you have your new Assets.car that you need do copy over original Assets.cat on System Information app.
That is it!

aboutthismac.png
 

Attachments

  • cartool.zip
    16.3 KB · Views: 1,403
I did manage to follow Defrag's description, but the original Assets.car file is 3.6MB and the xcode generated is only 1.4MB, so something is missing.
This is what I ended up doing :
Install ThemeEngine from https://github.com/alexzielenski/ThemeEngine/releases
cd /Applications/Utilities/System\ Information.app/Contents/Resources/
cp Assets.car Assets_org.car
cp Assets.car to ~/Downloads
Open ~/Downloads/Assets.car with ThemeEngine
Replace the SystemLogo image by dragging a new image over, and save
su
cp /Users/<your login>/Downloads/Assets.car .

The Assets.car file is the same size as the original and works.
Screen Shot 2018-09-29 at 11.13.14 am.png
 
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The reason for the smaller size in the Assets.car at the 1st post is actually there are 4 files:

SystemLogo-Skyglow.png
[email protected]
SystemLogo.png
[email protected]

The skyglow version is for the dark theme and the original for the light theme.

See the attached screenshots

About_This_Mac_Dark.jpg
About_This_Mac_Light.jpg
 
I did manage to follow Defrag's description, but the original Assets.car file...
I just followed your steps, it worked.
But, ummmm...
When I try to do it again, can't copy, remove, even change ownership.
Actually all the system apps are locked.
basically nothing I can do, always shows 'Operation not permitted'
 
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Will this issue affected by SIP setting?
YES!
I've just changed from 0x67 to 0x01 few days ago.
So if you guys try to do these procedure, you must change SIP setting first.
 
Will this issue affected by SIP setting?
YES!
I've just changed from 0x67 to 0x01 few days ago.
So if you guys try to do these procedure, you must change SIP setting first.

Hi, correct you need to have root / super user permissions to make changes to those folders / files.
 
Hi, correct you need to have root / super user permissions to make changes to those folders / files.
But I used sudo, the result was still the same.
When I changed SIP setting back from 0x01 to 0x67, everything works.

By the way, do you guys know how to edit graphic card model in this section?
 
Thanks

Duly Roggulated!!!

385465
 
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I tried to follow the Post's description. Didn't work at all. I always ended up getting stuck in Terminal with this error
Captura de ecrã 2019-05-19, às 10.40.31.png

So, I followed @Fatbike 's work [Post #2]. And it worked like a charm
Captura de ecrã 2019-05-19, às 11.04.18.png

Now I only have to change the Mac Name and the CPU Info :clap:
 
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