Change About This Mac

Want to show your actual CPU? Want an absolutely cursed image in your about this Mac? Follow this easy guide!

Requirements

• macOS Mojave
• Xcode for plist/hex editor
  • Alternative plist editor of choice
  • Alternative hex editor of choice
• ThemeEngine to edit .car files
• iOSLocalizationEditor to edit .strings file
• SIP must be disabled temporarily. It can be reenabled afterwards

Although this guide may work on actual Macs, no promise is made. This guide is intended for hackintoshes only, changes made are purely cosmetic and cannot be used to e.g upgrade to Mojave on an old Mac

Preparation

Create 2 folders in a location of your choice(Terminal commands assume desktop), one named backup & another folder named modified. The modification folder is required for some changes we will be making

Change icon

Prerequisite

Create or download yourself a squared, preferably 512x512 .png file you will use

Steps to replace

Open a Terminal window and paste the following cp /Applications/Utilities/System\ Information.app/Contents/Resources/Assets.car ~/Desktop/modified/ && cp /Applications/Utilities/System\ Information.app/Contents/Resources/Assets.car ~/Desktop/backup/ This will copy the original file to both locations.

Open ThemeEngine and click the File option and choose Open, Select the file in your modification folder and open Assets.car. Scroll down on the left sidebar until you get to SystemLogo:

There are versions for both light and dark mode, with a '@2x' scale version for each. (By default, the 2x scaled versions are the 2 middle ones).

To replace the system icon, drag a .png file over the version you wish to replace:

When you're done, hit ⌘WinKey+S to save the Assets.car file

After this, return to the terminal window and type sudo mv ~/Desktop/modified/Assets.car /Applications/Utilities/System\ Information.app/Contents/Resources/Assets.car Hit enter, then it will prompt for your password. Enter your password(it will not appear to be typing, but it is) and hit enter. This replaces the original file with the new modified one.

NOTE: If you get permission error after entering the command, you have SIP enabled

After the file is replaced, you can open About This Mac and see your changes:

Changing Mac model name

Copy the original file for backup with

cp ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.SystemProfiler.plist ~/Desktop/backup

Type in a terminal open ~/Library/Preferences and search for com.apple.SystemProfiler.plist

Open it in your plist editor of choice:

Under CPU Names should be a string named with the last 4 digits of your serial number and language code.

Edit the Value part however you want. I'm going to set my motherboard name here for example:

Save the file and reboot for changes to take effect:

Changing CPU name

Prerequisite

CPU type in Clover must be set to Unknown Your milage may vary on how safe this is, but I had no issues changing this.

Steps to edit

Copy the original file with cp /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/AppleSystemInfo.framework/Versions/A/Resources/en.lproj/AppleSystemInfo.strings ~/Desktop/backup/ && cp /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/AppleSystemInfo.framework/Versions/A/Resources/en.lproj/AppleSystemInfo.strings ~/Desktop/backup/

This assumes you are using english as your system language.

Afterwards open AppleSystemInfo.strings in your modified folder with LocalizationEditor, scrolling down until you see UnknownCpuKind modified as Unknown:

Edit the modified part to whatever you want it to be. I will be setting it to my CPU name.

There is no manual save/undo action, once you are done exit Localizationeditor.

To apply your changes, insert the following into a terminal sudo mv ~/Desktop/modified/AppleSystemInfo.strings /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/AppleSystemInfo.framework/Versions/A/Resources/en.lproj/AppleSystemInfo.strings This will prompt for your password, enter it and hit enter.

Once this is done, reboot for your changes to take effect:

Changing OS name

Preparation

The name you wish to use must be exactly 12 characters, spaces are allowed so if you wish to put less, just add spaces. Anything more or less will result in a malformed About This Mac.

Steps to edit

Start by backing up the file with cp /Applications/Utilities/System\ Information.app/Contents/MacOS/System\ Information ~/Desktop/modified/ && cp /Applications/Utilities/System\ Information.app/Contents/MacOS/System\ Information ~/Desktop/backup/

After this, cd ~/Desktop/modified and run this command to remove the signature from the executable: codesign --remove-signature System\ Information This is required since we are modifying the binary directly.

If you're using Xcode, to open the binary in the hex editor, open Xcode > File > Open > Desktop/modified/System Information Once it is opened hit View > Navigators > Show project Navigator. After this right click on the app in the newly open app > Open as Hex:

Hit CMD/Winkey + F to search for MacOS Mojave. On the very left side, this should be numbered at 334495.

Now edit the MacOS Mojave text to anything less or equal to 12 characters. Remember that if it is less than 12 characters, add extra spaces until it is 12 characters.

After this, save your work and exit Xcode.

Enter this into the terminal to replace the original binary with our modified one:

sudo mv ~/Desktop/modified/System\ Information /Applications/Utilities/System\ Information.app/Contents/MacOS/System\ Information

After this, you can open About this Mac and your results should appear:

Finish

Now that this is done, you can reboot with SIP enabled, and you should be good!

Errors? Something wrong? Open an issue and I'll get to it.