How to change Dashboard background in Mac OS X?

Mac OS X Lion had a hand full of features and one such features is the new Mission control. The Mission Control has the dashboard integrated into it and in this tutorial, we will try to change the default background image of your Dashboard.

The current default background has been there for years now and the lego background would be boring for some people. In this tutorial, we will change it to some blue linen background.

How to change default Dashboard background in Mac OS X Lion:

  1. Pick the image you want to replace with and name it pirelli.png. We need to rename this since Dashboard takes image of only this name.
  2. Now, Right-Click on the Finder icon in the dock and go to this folder: /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources/
  3. Locate the file named pirelli.png and take a backup of the file. May be copy it to your desktop or anywhere you wish!
  4. Copy and past the file you renamed in Step-1 into the Resources folder. A prompt will popup asking for the Admin Privilege. Just key in your password.
  5. Now open up terminal and type killall Dock

Before you do this, make sure that the image you are replacing with is of your desktop’s size, since it will not be tiled. Here’s a screenshot of my new Dashboard:

Hope this was helpful. Stay tuned for some more OS X Lion tips.

  • Pingback: How to change the Dashboard background in Mac OS X Lion | iG33kstas iBlog(R)()

  • MJ

    You also have to change mini_pirelli.png otherwise the preview in Mission Control won’t work properly.

  • Sam

    I followed all the instructions, but my image was tiled. Do you know what may have caused this?

  • Maurice

    Strange, I followed procedure as described above and used Desktop picture ‘Tiles Pine’ as the image I like to use for Dashboard. I changed it as well as I changed mini_pirelli, ‘cut the power’ of Dock with Terminal’s ‘killall Dock’ and strangely the cosmic Lion picture shows up in Dashboard (…F12 and Mission Control).
    How odd is that?…and what went wrong?

    Grtz.

  • Maurice

    …excuse me, I found the problem: spelling not right. Used capital letters in beginning of names. Now all works fine. Thx.

    Grtz.

  • Maurice

    ….my only wonder: How can we make Dashboard transparent like in Snow and all the days before? So you can keep seeing your content on your desktop and Dashboard ‘flows on top’….somebody knows?

    Grtz.

  • Maurice

    Wow!…10 min. later and the answer on ‘How to make Dashboard transparent again’ is simple. Just uncheck ‘Show Dashboard as a Space’ in System prefs > Mission Control. Even a baby could do this =]

    Note: When clicking on Mission Control icon in the Dock Dashboard will not appear like before. It is just disabled. So it seems.

    Grtz.

  • GabriellePillon

    Hi, i don’t have CoreServices in my Library folder…what should I do?

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