Normally Macs usually have a single user and are dedicated entirely to one person. However, perhaps in a more specific case, we could find ourselves with a Mac that has several users. It could be the case of a work team, school, or because we have created a user for a family member. In all cases, it will always be useful for us to know, at least if we are the system administrators, how to delete a Mac user.
In today's article we will see how to delete a user from a Mac and the possible possibilities involved. We will see it in the simplest way possible, so that all types of users know how to perform this action without difficulties.
To start we'll get some context about Mac users; It is important to understand that a Mac can have multiple users, included can have multiple admin users. However, the Mac as a device will always be linked to an Apple ID, which should be the corresponding one for the owner of the Mac.
This user can never be deleted easily, the "Find my Mac" function and some other link with the Apple ID in our system would have to be eliminated. On the contrary, the rest of the Apple computer users They will be easy to manage, both to delete and add them.
How to delete a user from Mac
The first thing we will have to do is make sure that the user with whom we have logged in is a system administrator user. If we do not know this information, later we will see where there is a way to verify it. Also It will be imperative that the user we are going to manage, in this case delete, will not be able to be logged in on our Mac. It will be imperative to close said session, or if we cannot because we do not know the password, for example, restart the computer so that all active sessions are closed. We will additionally have the knowledge that We will not be able to delete an administrator user nor is this the only user with this role active. To be able to do it in this case, we will have to select another user as Administrator previously.
Subsequently, we will go to the Mac Settings. Here we will simply have to go to the Users and Groups section. You may have to scroll down to see the section. It will largely depend on the version of macOS you have installed on your computer.
Once inside we will see all the users that you have created on the Mac, both unique and shared users. From this screen We can manage these users, from their passwords, permissions, roles, groups or passwords. Additionally, here we can see if a user is Standard or Administrator, as we mentioned at the beginning of this section.
To delete a user, we will simply have to stand on top of it and click on the «-« icon located at the bottom of the list of created users.
Now, We will be shown three possibilities that we will see in the next section in detail; Save the home folder as a disk image, leave the user's home folder as it appears, or delete the user's home folder entirely.
Save home folder
This option will allow us to save the entire user's personal folder as a disk image, that is, It will record us in a compressed and grouped document with all the folders of photos, documents, desktop, etc... In short, any information that the user has stored that we are going to delete. In this way we ensure that no information is lost, in case there is something that we have missed, or that we did not count on.
To open this file, any application capable of managing DMG image files will suffice. With her we can access all the files that were in the folder of the user at the time of deletion.
Also We can skip this file if we have a backup copy updated regularly through Time Machine, since these files will be kept in the copy for a good period of time. However, this option can be really useful to send said user, by email for example, all their information electronically.
If you need more information about how Time Machine works, we leave you this article to learn more about it in detail.
Leave the folder as it appears
This option is the least recommended, since what we will do is simply delete the user, without intervening in any type of information in their personal folder. This causes the disk space occupied by that user on our system to continue to be occupied. with files that in principle are useless to us. Therefore, the use of this option would be limited to very specific cases. Even so, we can also use this option to continue keeping the user's files for a while, to Send the user a specific folder that they have left on the Mac.
This last way of preserving the files of the user to be deleted can also be effective, but in the tests carried out, traces of the old user always end up remaining. Ultimately, the best thing would be to opt for one of the other options. Especially if we are not users with more advanced knowledge, well Later, to eliminate these traces of old users, you would have to use the Mac Terminal.
Delete the user folder
This is the most recommended option to ensure that the Mac is cleaned of any personal information that may remain on the device. Of course, unlike the other options, We will have to be sure that there is no information to save, since this option will be irreversible.
In any case, if we count, as we commented in the first case, a copy in Time Machine, we will not have to worry about freely choosing this option, Well, Time Machine history will keep the user's files in the regular backup for a fairly long time. We can even recover a specific file within said backup.