Logged in user screen saver defaults

[mconners]

Hi Everyone,

In our testing, the no matter what settings I make changes to, the default screen saver settings for a logged in user, is set to 20 minutes. For our design classes, this isn't nearly long enough. We need this set to an hour. Many times our faculty will open a document on a projector screen and go through it for tiny details to explain things to our students and they can leave a static image up on the screen for an hour or more.

No matter what I have done, the 20 minutes is locked and not editable in any way. I have tried various plist changes and so forth, nothing changes it. I even edited the screensaver.plist in the byhost folder located on the client to see if it can change the screen saver module, but the idle time stays at 20 minutes.

Anyone work around this limit?

[pete_c]

Do you have any Configuration Profiles installed? Have you verified the same behavior if you remove any or all?

Are you deploying any packages with Fill User Template enabled? Does the same behavior occur if you create a new local user account? Hva e you tried removing the entire ByHost folder and restarting?

[mconners]

Hello @pete_c there is a configuration profile that HAD the login window and security/privacy settings set. I have removed the login window screen saver and I can now change the idle amount from 20 minutes to some other value. However, I cannot preset this amount still.

There is a chance this is related to a fill user template as there are many of my packages that have done this. I may have to go back and track this down. My other option is to simply not check the screen saver for the login window on these employee systems. Then employees can choose the value that best serves them. Student Macs will indeed have a minimal amount of time for the login window screen saver.

I haven't tried removing the ByHost folder. I suspect this will simply remove existing preferences and they will be rebuilt on login?