How to setup a custom policy banner on macOS

Published: 18 September 2019
Filed Under: macOS

You can display a custom policy banner to be displayed at the login window on a macOS system and forces a user to accept it. This is different from setting a custom login screen message that doesn't require any user interaction.

Create the policy file and its security permissions

In this step, we create the policy banner text file and set the security permissions so that everyone is able to read it.

sudo touch /Library/Security/PolicyBanner.txt
sudo chmod o+r /Library/Security/PolicyBanner.txt

Modify the contents of the banner

Run the following command to open the policy banner file with Nano. This will allow you to add your policy text. After you're finished, close and save the file, then reboot the system.

sudo nano /Library/Security/PolicyBanner.txt

Remove the policy banner

Run the following command to delete the policy banner text file. This will stop is from showing up at login.

sudo rm /Library/Security/PolicyBanner.txt