Create a New user Account

In this video, I’m going to show you how you can create another user account on your Mac. When you create another user account on your Mac, it’s almost like you have two different Macs. Each user is going to have their own home folder, which means each user’s going to have their own pictures, folder, their own music folder.

Once you create your new account, you can also easily switch between these two different accounts. Let’s see how this works. Let’s go to my Mac. Now I have a couple of different accounts on the smack. I have my personal account, which has all of my personal information in there. And then I have my demo account.

This is what I am in right now. This is what I do all my recordings on. If I wanted to switch between these two different accounts, all I have to do is go up to my menu bar, and you’re going to see Dan’s Tutorials. This is the account that I am in. To switch to a different account. I click on this, and I select the account I want to go into.

If I were to select Dan Wassink, what it would do is it would switch to that account. I would have to type in my password, and then I’d be in that other account. Now each one of these accounts has their own user folder. What I’m going to do is I’m going to open up a new Finder window here. When we look at the folder structure, our Mac’s hierarchy, you’re going to see, I have a users folder. This is where all of our information is in this user’s folder. Remember how I said I have a couple of different accounts. Well, if we look here, you’re going to see, I have Dan’s Tutorials and Dan Wassink.

Those are my two different accounts. So when I click on dance tutorials here, you’re going to see that I have all of my different folders, applications, desktop documents, downloads movies, music, and pictures. And then when I go over to Dan Wassink here. I also have those same folders along with some additional folders.

So think of each user account almost has their own computer. Each user is going to have their own music folder. Each user is going to have their own pictures folder, and you can easily switch between these different accounts by going up to the menu bar and then selecting the account you want to go into.

So how did I set this up? Well, it’s pretty easy. What we need to do is we need to go to our system preferences. So I go up to the Apple menu. And then we go over to system preferences from here. What we need to do is we need to go to users and groups. When I click on this, you’re going to see all of the users on the left side.

So here we have Dan’s Tutorials; this is my current user. And then I also have other users. Dan Wassink. To create another account. All I have to do is unlock it. So I’m going to unlock this. I type in my password. And then I click on the plus. So let’s go ahead. I hadn’t clicked on it. And from here, I can create my new account.

The first thing is, is we need to set what type of account it is. We can make it a standard account or an administrator account. What I usually recommend is an administrator account. Otherwise, anytime that person wants to change their account, it will require its administrator to approve it.

So again, I usually recommend just making them an administrator by making them an administrator. This does not mean that they will be able to get into the other accounts. It just means that they will be able to make changes to their account without having an administrator approve it. So let’s go and make this an administrator account.

And now, what I do is I type in the name. We’re going to make an account from my wife. So I’m going to type in here, Beth Wassink. So now Beth is going to have her account on this computer. I have to type in a password, so I type it in here. I type it in again. To verify. Now I know what my password is, but if you want to leave a password, hint in here; you can do that as well.

So if you forget it, you can click on password hint, and it’ll give you a hint. I’m going to leave this blank. And now, all I need to do is click on create user. So I created a new account as an administrator. I gave it a name, the account name was filled in automatically, and then I gave it a password.

Now, all I need to do is click on create user, and you’re going to see we have a new user. So what do you think we’re going to see when I go back to my finder window? Well, let’s close this, and let’s open up a new finder window. When we go over to users, you’re going to see, we have Beth Wassink, and I cannot get into any one of those folders.

It is a completely separate account. So now that we have this account set up, how do we add our fast user switching up here on the upper right-hand corner? So I can switch between these different accounts while we need to go back over to our system preferences. So now, what I do is I go back over to my Apple menu, and then we go over to system preferences.

And we go back over to that users in groups. We have one other option here that we need to set. We have to first unlock it. I type in my password. And now, what we do is we go over to log in options. When I select this, you’re going to see an option to show fast user switching. When you select this, you get this little menu up here on the upper right-hand corner.

And what you’re able to do is switch between your different accounts. If I were to uncheck this. I would no longer easily switch between my different user accounts because it is no longer in my menu bar. What I would need to do is I would need to go underneath the Apple menu and then log out of one account and log into another.

I prefer to have fast user switching enabled. When I select this again, what I’m able to do is go up to my menu bar and select which account I want to go into. So that’s how you can easily create another account and switch between those different accounts on your Mac. The first thing you need to do is you need to go to your system preferences and then unlock users and groups.

Once you unlock it, you’re going to be able to. Create a new user. I usually make them an administrator; you type in the username, the password. And then also, what I will do is I will go to login options and make sure that fast user switching is turned on. Once you do that, your new account will be created, and you can easily switch between those different accounts.

By going up to the upper right-hand corner of your menu bar. So that’s how you can easily create a new user account and switch between them the Mac.