You can do this by clicking the Time Machine menu in the menu bar-it looks like a clock with a circular arrow around it-and choosing Back Up Now.
It just requires an up-to-date Time Machine backup (or clone backup) of your Mac. However, it turns out there’s a much easier way, if you think creatively. I’ve come across complicated procedures requiring shell commands in Terminal and/or serious account-administration tools, but most people would take one look at these procedures and decide that, well, creating new accounts and reconfiguring them doesn’t look so bad after all. Unfortunately, OS X doesn’t provide a simple way to duplicate an existing user account. Time Machine (or clone backup) to the rescue
1 And just to be safe, I wanted to duplicate it twice, creating a copy for each kid while letting me save the original account until I could be sure everything was working properly. No, what I wanted to do was duplicate the existing kid account. But I didn’t want to manually create two new accounts, as the current kid account was already set up mostly the way we wanted it for each kid: with the right parental controls, with the desired apps in the Dock, with the necessary Safari bookmarks and keychain-saved passwords, and so on. Given all this, I decided that it was time for each child to have her own account. And, of course, each wants a different desktop picture, a different account name and photo, and so on. They both also use the same online-homework system, so sharing an account means lots of logging in and out of accounts in Safari. Now that the kids are getting older (both are in elementary school), each wants to use apps with her own settings.
This setup worked pretty well until the past year or so. That account had parental controls enabled, and it was configured for really young kids who did little beyond using a few apps aimed at preschoolers and kinders. It’s just not that common of a task.įor years, our kids have shared a single account (“Kids Account”) on the family Mac. But until recently, one thing I’d never tried to do, let alone written about, was duplicate an existing user account. I was also one of the people behind the ChangeShortName utility.
#What are users for terminal mac os sierra how to#
The first time was likely a 2002 Macworld article (no longer available online) explaining how to move your user folder to a different drive more recently, I did a tutorial on changing your short username. Over the years, I’ve written a lot about OS X user accounts.
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