Set up a Guest User Account
Mac Tip #428, 17 March 2010

Ever needed to let a visitor use your Mac for a few hours? Were you concerned they might accidentally trash your files or mess things up? Set them up as a Guest User. They have separate access and all their stuff is deleted when they log off.

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Let others use your Mac

It’s one thing to move aside for 5 minutes while a friend looks at a web page on your Mac. It’s quite another to hand your Mac over to a guest while they surf the web, write emails, download files, sort out photos and generally use the Mac as though it were their own.

Allow guests to login to this computer.

And then when they leave you may have to clean up bookmarks, downloads, browser history, stray files, and so on.

Luckily, Mac OS X Snow Leopard has a feature that makes all of this very much easier: a Guest Account.

The User Account

When you first set up a Mac you create a ‘User Account’. Often it carries your name. For example, on my Macs I am a user called miraz. If I ever have to log in, for example when I start up my Mac, I have to fill in my username and a password to be able to get in to all my documents.

When I save bookmarks or files they are saved in the folders for me as a User — in the miraz folder.

The Guest Account

Files will be deleted on logout.

In Snow Leopard there is a special account called the Guest Account. It doesn’t need a password to get in. The ‘catch’ is that when you log out of the Guest Account all the files belonging to the Guest are deleted.

Set up a Guest Account

To set up a guest account takes only one click, though there are a couple of steps to reach the right screen:

1. Open Apple menu > System Preferences…
2. Click on the Accounts Preference Pane (in the System row). The Accounts pane opens up.
3. If necessary, click on the padlock icon in the bottom left corner of the window to unlock the pane. You need to enter the account name and password for a user with Admin privileges. This ‘unlocks’ the settings. The padlock icon now shows as being ‘open’.
4. Select the Guest Account item in the list of Accounts on the left hand side of the window. This reveals the settings for the Guest Account. Refer to the first screenshot attached to this Post.
5. Check the box beside Allow guests to login to this computer. Now guests will be able to log in to a separate Guest account. They do not need a password.
6. If you wish, check the box to Enable Parental Controls, and then click the Open Parental Controls… button to set up limits on what guests can do.
7. Quit System Preferences.

Use the Guest Account

Now anyone can log in to the Guest Account and use any software on your Mac. They can save documents, photos and other files or bookmarks. They can customise the machine to suit themselves. None of their activities affect how things are set up for you under your login.

And unless you explicitly gave them access to shared folders they cannot access your files.

Delete on logout

For as long as the Guest does not log out their files and settings are preserved. As soon as they log out though, or presumably if the machine is restarted, all their files and settings are deleted.

The next person to log in to the Guest Account is presented with a clean slate, and default settings.

Have you used a Guest Account? Tell us in the Comments how it worked for you.