If you’ve bought a Mac and plan to use it as a family computer, here’s how to create a user account so each family member can have their own.
While you can use a single user account where everyone is logged in and used, it’s much better to have individual user accounts where each user has their own space to store their files and apps, rather than sharing space with other users.
Having different user accounts is especially useful when there are many family members at home. Usually, sharing a user account between three people is fine, but more than that and individual user accounts just make more sense.
It is also useful when each user has their own set of files that they want to store on the computer. Sometimes it’s okay to have all of these files in one user account that people share, but if you have sensitive files that don’t really need to be seen by others, having your own user account is a good way to keep them all. Yourself.
Also, if you’re a parent, you can enable parental controls on certain user accounts by restricting the websites they can visit and how much time they can spend on the computer in the first place.
If you are interested in having multiple user accounts, here is how to create a user account on Mac.
Creating User Accounts on Mac
It’s really easy to create a user account and customize its options in OS X. Just follow these simple steps.
Open it from the Dock or go to the Apple logo in the menu bar and select it from there. Then click on it in the window that opens.
If you have an admin password set (which you probably do), click the padlock in the lower left corner and enter your admin password to start making changes.
You should see that you have at least one user account and most likely an administrator account. To add another user account, click on the little plus icon at the bottom and a popup will appear that will allow you to add some details about the new user account.
Most of the time, you’ll only want one user account, but if you want an account controlled by parental controls, be sure to click the drop-down menu and select .
Next, enter the user’s name and an account name. After that, you can set a password for that user account using that user’s iCloud password or by creating an entirely new password specifically to log into that account.
When you’re done, click to complete the creation of that user account. From here, you can select the user account and then click to manage these settings for that user account.
Parental controls are great if you have kids because they keep them safe while browsing the web and also prevent them from wasting all their time on the computer, especially if they have homework to do.
With parental controls, you can tweak a number of settings and set up a handful of different restrictions. For example, you can specify which applications users can and cannot access, and create a list of websites that will be blocked when they access the internet. You can also let Apple try to automatically block all inappropriate websites.
You can even set time limits on how much time they spend on the computer. You can set them to have a certain number of minutes that they can only access and use the computer at specified times.
You can also block or limit other random features of OS X, such as disabling the front-facing camera, blocking dictation, and preventing them from burning CDs and DVDs. You can also hide abusive words in the dictionary and limit printer access; this can eliminate the risk of children changing printer settings and messing things up.
