By default, a Mac that’s booting up will only display an Apple logo and loading indicator on a gray background, not the technical information such as detected drives, the RAM test, etc. that PCs do (although this output can be enabled by holding down the ⌘-V (command-V) keys before the Apple logo appears).

bootxchanger

A Mac’s boot logo is stored in the EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface - the Mac’s version of a BIOS), and to change the logo you can use the BootXChanger application available for free from namedfork.net. BootXChanger comes with a set of images to choose from, and gives you the ability to build your own logos by dragging-and-dropping images into the application.

bootxchanger-default-logos

The application will not change the boot screen’s background color from the default #bfbfbf, and PNG-8 or GIF images with 100 or less colors are recommended. You will be warned if your custom logos don’t comply with these restrictions, and since you’ll be modifying low-level system files you should be sure that you understand the risks before using the application.

BootXChanger can be downloaded here.

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