Creating User Accounts

Introduction: In this video, we’re going to take a look at user accounts on the Mac. With our Mac, what we can do is we can create different user accounts for different people. Each user account is going to have their own home folder. This means that each user is going to have their own documents folder, their own photos folder, their own music folder, their own downloads folder. Let’s take a look at user accounts on the Mac. Let’s go to my Mac. Now let’s first take a look at my Mac. I have different user accounts. I think if we take a look at my Mac, you’ll get a better understanding of how this works.

I’m in my Finder here, and let’s go over to My Computer. What I’m going to do is I’m going to go here and then we’re going to go to Computer. Now, what I need to do is I need to double-click on my Macintosh HD. If we recall, when we talked about the folder structure, our Mac, macOS has different folders. We have our applications folder. This is where all of our applications are stored. We have our library, our system. This is what macOS uses. We want to stay out of these, but then at the very bottom, we have a users folder. Each user folder is going to have its own set of folders. Let’s go ahead and take a look at my users folder.

I have multiple users. I double-click on it, and now we can see we have multiple users. I have Dan Wassink, which is my personal account, I have a guest account, and then I have macOS Mojave, which is what I’m recording this on, and then I have Noteboom Tutorials. The shared folders where we can store files and folders that we want to share between all of the users.

The nice thing about these users is that only the user has access to the files and folders within the user folder. As an example, when I go and click on the triangle here to open up macOS Mojave, the only person that can access these folders, the applications, desktop documents, downloads, movies, music, pictures, public and work documents, it’s a folder that I added in there.

The only person that can access these files and folders are macOS Mojave. Now I’m logged in as macOS Mojave so that I can access each one of these. This is my home folder, but now when we go over to Noteboom Tutorials, let’s go ahead and open it. You’re going to see that we have these red circles by each folder. I do not have access to these files and folders, so I cannot see what is in the documents folder. I don’t have access to it.

I cannot see what is in the pictures folder. The reason why I can’t see it is because I am not logged in as Noteboom Tutorials, I’m logged in as macOS Mojave. When we create a new account or a new user account, what it does is, it creates a new user folder in my users folder. Now to switch between these different users, what you can do is you can go up to the menu bar, there’s a menu extra for switching. You’re going to see this as macOS Mojave here. This is my account that I’m currently in. If I wanted to switch to my personal account, all I have to do is click on this and then go to Dan Wassink.

You’re going to see that it has a checkmark to the left. This means that I am logged in at that account. Now what I would do is I would select this type in the password, and then I’d be able to view all the files and folders in Dan Wassink. I would not be able to see all the files and folders that are in macOS Mojave because I’d be logged in as Dan Wassink. If I wanted to log into Noteboom Tutorials, I would select Noteboom Tutorials. It does not have a checkmark in it, which means I’m not currently logged in. I would type in the password, and then I’d be logged in. This is what we call our fast user switching.

I just go to the user that I want to switch to. We do have a guest user. The guest user is a user that is deleted once you log out of it. What you could do is you could give someone temporary access to your computer as a guest. Anything that they do, their Safari browsing history, any notes that they take, any documents that they create are going to be deleted when they log out of the guest account. It’s a temporary account. You want to make sure that anything that is stored in that account does not have to be saved. Now I can also switch to a different user account by going up underneath the Apple menu and then go to Log Out.

What this will do is this will log me out of macOS Mojave, and then I’m going to have a list of users that I can log into. I would click on my name, Dan Wassink, enter in the password, and I’d be in that account. If I were to log out, I would not have the checkmark next to the name here, because I’d be logged out of it. That’s how user accounts work. We set up a user account, it creates a user folder, and within that folder, we’re going to have all of our different folders. Other users cannot access these folders.

To switch between our users, we go to our fast user switching in the upper right-hand corner, or what we can do is we can log out and then log in to a different account by going to the Apple menu. Now, how do we set up a user account? We do that through our system preferences. I’m going to close this window, and now we’re going to go to system preferences. Where we want to go is to users and groups, select it, and now you’re going to see all of the different users here. Now, they are grayed out right now, why is that? Because this is locked. What we can do is we can lock our system preferences.

Why do we want to lock it? So then we don’t accidentally make a change. Only administrators can lock or unlock our preferences. When we create a new user, we can give them administrator rights to unlock it. Let’s go ahead and unlock this. I’m an administrator. You’re going to see, it says, “Admin.” Now I’m going to click on this to unlock it. I enter my password, and then I click unlock. Now, you’re going to see that I can go and make changes to this. Now, why can I not make changes to Dan Wassink? That’s still grayed out. That’s because I am logged into that.

Remember, when we went up to our fast user switching, we had a checkmark to the left of the name. That means I’m logged in. What I would have to do is I would have to go to that account and then go underneath the Apple menu and log out. So, I’d go over to the Apple menu, and then I would log out, and then I’d be able to make changes to it. We can only make changes to user accounts that we are not logged into. I could make changes to Noteboom Tutorials. What changes can I make? Well, what I could do is I could take away the administrator rights.

To do that, all I have to do is just uncheck allow user to administer this computer. Once I do that, they’re not going to be able to make any changes to the system preferences. Also, what I could do is I could add parental controls. We’ll talk about that in another lesson. We can’t add parental controls to administers, but we can add them to other users. Let’s go and create a new user. To create a new user, I click on the plus, and then I just type in the username. Before we do that, you want to make sure you select what type of user they are.

Are they an administrator, a standard user which is a not-administrator, or do I want to set up a user where I can manage them with parental controls? We can always add parental controls to on account later. Again, we’ll talk about parental controls in another lesson. I can also set it up for sharing only and group. With groups, what I could do is I could create a group for children and then create a separate account for each child and then assign parental controls to that group. We’re just going to stick with simple user accounts right now.

Now what I do is I just go and click on Standard and let’s just call this one Pepper. Now the account name is Pepper. Then what we need to do is we need to enter a password. I’m just going to call this one pepper1. We need to verify it, pepper1, and then I can also enter a password hint. This way, if you type in the password wrong, after a certain amount of times, it’s going to give you a hint of what the password is. Well, my password is pretty easy to remember, so I’m just going to leave it blank.

Now all I need to do to create my user is click on Create User, and now we have my user. I can go and select a different picture here by clicking on edit and then select a picture. I’m just going to leave it, so I click on cancel. I can reset the password, and then if I want to allow them to administer the computer, I can also click on allow user to administer this computer. Then they become an administrator. To assign parental controls, I just enable parental controls and then set what controls I want. That’s all there is to create a new user.

Now, when I go up to my fast user switching, watch what happens. We have Pepper. What do you think we’re going to see when we go to my users folder? I’m going to click on Go and go to Computer. Now we’re going to go to my Macintosh. I’m going to go to users, and now you’re going to see Pepper. I open it up. We have my desktop, documents, downloads, library, movies, music, and pictures. Again, I can’t access them. Only Pepper can access these. That’s all there is to create a new user. Now we do have a few options with users.

What I’m going to do is I’m going to go to login options. This is where we have our options. I click on it, and now what I can do is I can set who I want to log in as automatically. If I were to restart my computer right now, what it would do is it would log in as Dan Wassink. What I can do is I can set it to a different user, or I can just turn it off. When you turn it off, it’s going to show you all of your users, and you click on the user that you want to have a login as. If you do not want your computer to automatically log into the user, select off. Now we can also set when we’re looking at all of our users, how we want to see them.

Do we want to see them as a list of users, or do we want to use the name and password? When we use the name and password, what we need to do is we have to type in the username and the password. You will not see them. It’s just going to be two blank fields. This is primarily used for schools where the student will go and enter their username and password, and then it will log into their account.

When you have several hundred users, you don’t want to have a list of users. In most cases, what you do is you use a list of users, so then you can see your list of users. You just click on the name, and when you enter the password, and you can go into that account. You can set if you want to show the Sleep, Restart, and Shutdown buttons, show the input menu on the login window, show password hints, and show the fast user switching. I like to show the fast user switching, so I can easily switch between my users here, but if you don’t want to see that, you can go and deselect this.

You can also set it for just an icon. Now I click on the icon, and now all we have is an icon here, so it doesn’t take up as much space, but when I click on it, I still have all of my users.

We’re going to go back over to full name. When I’m finished, I just click on the lock to lock it, or I just go and close the system preferences. The last thing I want to mention is we can also set what applications open up for a user. When I go and click on the user, I’m just going to click on macOS Mojave here. If we go over to the right, you’re going to see login items.

When I click on this, I’m able to set what apps will open up when I log in. All I have to do is just click on the plus here and then add the app that I want to have open up when I’m logged in. This is just like going down to the Dock if you remember when we talked about the Dock. If I control-click on this, what I can do is I can set under options to open that login. When I select this, it’s just like adding it to my login items.

That’s how user accounts work on the Mac.