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Change your user icon on Mac OSX Mountain Lion (a.k.a 10.8)


I just migrated my MacBook Pro from OSX Lion to OSX Mountain Lion. There are some changes here and there and of course the most notable are the iCloud integration, iChat, Notification feature and the Gamecenter integration.

Well, I presume the upgrade would be pretty straight forward. I did a clean install instead as my MacBook just came back from repairs so I thought what the heck... Just do a clean install since there is nothing inside that I need. After my installation, I wanted to change my user icon to a customised icon and I realise that I cannot do it the same way I did before with OSX Lion.



What I needed to do before was to open up "Settings -> User Groups" and then just click on the icon and select edit to choose my own picture. Now I know you can choose from the stock picture or even use the "Camera" to take a picture of yourself, but I wanted an icon from my photo library. In Mountain Lion, there is no menu option that will allow you to select a picture from your photo library (or from anywhere on your hardrive for that matter).



But after a googling this problem, I found that it was rather easy (albeit unintuitive) and I got my icon changed in no time. Here's how you do it:
  • Open the "Settings" app.
  • Select "Users & Groups".
  • Then select your user (or the one you want to change the icon of, if you are the admin user)
  • Now open the "Finder" app
  • Go to the folder that contains your picture you want to turn into your icon.
  • Make sure your Users & Groups windows is side by side your Finder window.
  • Now just drag your picture from your Finder window into the user icon picture in your Users & Groups window.
  • Done!
Some people say that this method is in fact very intuitive and user friendly. Others disagree and say that it should have been an option in the Users & Groups icon option in the first place rather than having users search on the internet for guides (counter-intuitive). Well, I think as long as it can be done, it doesn't matter.



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