Enable Fast User Switching to Switch between User Accounts

Dan Wassink 0:02
In this video, we’re going to look at how we can quickly switch between different users. On the Mac. We do this with fast user switching, which is located in the menu bar. Let’s see how we do this. Let’s go to my Mac. Now on the Mac, what we can do is have several user accounts, each user is going to have their own documents folder, their own desktop. On this Mac here, this is a MacBook Air, I have a couple of user accounts. I’m going to go to my Finder here.

When I go to my finder, and I go to my users folder, you’re going to see that we have a couple of different users dance tutorials, and Dan Wassink. Each one of these has their own downloads, folder, movies, folder, music, pictures, and public. It also has its own desktop and documents folder. So when I go over to Danwon, sync here, you’re going to see I have a completely different set of folders, and I cannot get in them, you cannot share these different folders, among accounts. The way that you set this up, it’s pretty simple, we just go over to our System Preferences underneath the Apple menu. And then from here, what we do is we go to Users and Groups. Click on this, and then all you have to do is just click on the lock to unlock it. And then I can click on the plus to add new users.

That’s pretty much all there is to it. Now how do you switch between these different users? Well, by default, the only way you can do that is by going up to the Apple menu. And then what you do is you log out. So what I could do is log out of dance tutorials. And then I have to log back in under danhua. Sync, I want to get back to Dan’s choice, I have to log out a Danwon sync, and then log back into dance tutorials. Also, when you do this, when you log out, it quits out of all of your different applications. It’s almost like you’re closing that computer down. So by default, you can only have one account open at a time. Well, with fast user switching, what we can do is we can easily switch between those different accounts all through the menu bar. And when we do that, it keeps all the applications and everything open in each perspective user account. To turn this on, we just go back over to our System Preferences. And then what we do is go over to our users and groups again, I do have to unlock it. So I have to click on the lock down here and turn my password.

And then what we do is we go over to login Options. Under login options, we have show fast user switching in the menu bar. When I turn this on, what we get is our Fast user switching icon here. Now before I go and click on this, we do have an option here, what we can do is we can set what shows in that menu bar right now to suffer icon. That’s why I see the icon here. But what I can do is set it to show the account name or the full name. So let’s go with full name. When I do that, it does take up more menu bar space, but I can actually see what account I am in. So I’m in dance tutorials right now, I can easily see that just by looking at it. I prefer to keep it at icon here. So then it doesn’t take as much space here.

So now I just click on this. And I can see my two accounts. If you had more accounts, you’d be able to see those as well. You can see that dance tutorials has an orange checkmark by that’s because that account is the one that we are in Danwon Sync has a gray checkmark in it. I’m not logged into that account. So let’s log in to Dan Weiss. You can see how this all works. So all I have to do is just click on danhua Sync here and watch what happens. I click on it. I hit Touch ID This is a MacBook Air with Touch ID and now I’m in my other account. You can see I have a different desktop picture different folders on my desktop. My dock is set up different it’s like it’s a separate computer. I want to go back to dance tutorials. All I have to do is just go back up under the menu bar here. And then we go over to dance tutorials. I use the touch ID and now I’m back in dance tutorials. So that’s all we have to do to switch between our different accounts if you have your computer setup for multiple accounts.

To set this up, you just go to your System Preferences and then you go to Users and Groups. From there all you want to do is unlock it so you can make any changes to it. And then click on login options under login options you’re going to see show user fast switching menu As and then you can select if you want to show it as an icon, or account name or the full name, I prefer to keep it as icon. Once you do that, if you want to switch accounts, you just go up to that menu bar and select the account you want to switch to enter in the password or if you have touch ID, you can just use Touch ID, and your computer will immediately switch over to that account. So that’s how we use fast user switching to switch between our different accounts we have on our Mac