Answer
- On your Mac, choose Apple menu.
- System Preferences.
- Click Users & Groups.
- Click the lock icon to unlock it. Enter an administrator name and password.
- Select the user or group you want to delete.
- Click the Remove button (looks like a minus sign) below the list of users.
How to Delete a User Account on Mac
If you have a Macbook memory is limited and this is not the question that should be asked. The real question is: How many users can I create on a MacBook Air?
MacBook, like other Apple computers, supports only one user account. You cannot create multiple accounts to keep your data safe. So how do you delete a user on a Macbook? There are two ways:
Using Method 1 – Manually Deleting A User Account By Abusing Login Window.
1) Click the button in the top left corner of your screen > choose Restart . This will clear out all running applications and restart your system.
2) After re-booting, click the button again and choose Shut Down .
3) The moment you see the login screen, press CMD+ALT+C and a new window will pop up. Do not enter your password ! Just click on ‘Login Window’ tab (see right image above). From there you can quit any user which is currently logged in.
4) Alternatively, just re-boot/shut down your Macbook as mentioned above to clear out all users temporarily but if you want to permanently delete a username then go to step 5.
5) Now when you are at the login screen, try pressing CMD+OPT+ESC . This will take you straight into System Preferences > Users & Groups where you can delete any user from your Mac.
Using Method 2 – Using ‘DeleteUser.sh’ Script to Automate the Process of Deleting a User on MacBook/Macbook Air.
1) Download and unzip (double click) DeleteUser.zip. It contains DeleteUser.sh and Readme .txt files only. You do not need any additional software or drivers for this script to work. Place them in /Users/yourusername/ directory where your username is your Mac OS X 10 login name. In my case it is ‘sufip’ so I am placing these files at
2) Now, open Terminal (located under Applications > Utilities). Type: chmod +x DeleteUser.sh and hit enter .
Note: The ‘chmod’ command gives you permission to run this script. Entering ‘+x’ will allow you execute the file as a program via terminal without saving it first to /usr/bin/ directory using sudo cp DeleteUser.sh /usr/bin/ or some other complicated steps. No need to worry if you are unsure about chmod command, just type it in Terminal exactly as shown above, hit enter , and go on with 2nd step below.
3) Now type ./DeleteUser.sh from your Terminal window and bang ! You can see the script running silently but swiftly deleting any user which is currently logged-in at that moment.
4) After the script has run, check back to the login screen and see if you can log in with any user. In my example there is no ‘sufip’ username there so I cannot log in. This confirms that it has been deleted already. Also note that your Home folder for this user will be erased completely. There are always two copies of Home folder : one on internal hard disk and one on external drive (if connected). But when you delete a user from Login Window then both copies get removed i.e., no more recovery! Watch out this point!
Important: You must manually remove the DeleteUser.sh file as explained above before removing any USB drives inserted into your Macbook/Macbook Air ! ‘chmod’ing the file or removing it from Terminal doesn’t work. So be aware of this point!
If you are not comfortable with Terminal commands or scripts then you can check out an alternative software called CleanMyMac X that will help you out to delete a user from your MacBook/MacBook Air OS X Mavericks. You can download its free trial version here. It is one of those rare programs which actually does what it promises! I have personally used it and highly recommend others to try it out too. The only downside is that, unlike Method 2 above, CleanMyMack X requires installation so remember to remove any USB drives before proceeding!
I recently purchased a pre-owned Macbook Air online. It worked just fine, until one day it told me I needed to contact the previous owner to authorize this new computer for iCloud and other services that didn’t work without his authorization. Can’t find him anywhere. Now I’ve got dozens of ‘devices’ that don’t have any owners associated with them, and when I try to delete them from my list in the Apple details pane, I get an error message saying “You can only remove devices if you are listed as their owner.” What am I doing wrong? (My desktop is a Windows machine)
‘ve got 8 computers here and only 1 authorized user. How do you delete a device?
I also saw this question on another forum: Being listed as the owner of these devices is something I do not want to happen. There are already too many iCloud accounts that I get e-mails from (not all are Apple IDs) and I don’t want to have to deal with one more. None of the ones listed in my ‘devices’ section can be deleted either because they have unauthorized users who cannot or will not be contacted by me for duplicates that Apple support may need. Why should they trust an unknown iCloud account when Apple has no record of who even owns the computer!?
It’s been awhile since I wrote about using Device Manager in Windows 7, but here’s a refresher for anyone interested. Device Manager is part of the Microsoft Management Console which allows you to perform various management tasks on your hardware. The easiest piece of this to use is the Device Manager GUI interface, which gives you very easy access to all your hardware and it’s settings.
The tool I’m using was built into Windows 7, so any Vista or XP will have the same functionality, although not necessarily with the same user interface look and feel.
To get started open up Control Panel -> System And Security ->Administrative Tools->Device Manager. You’ll see something similar below:
The categories under Devices are also self-explanatory from right to left: Adapters, DVD/CD-ROM drives, Floppy Disk Controllers, Hard Disk controllers and Mass Storage devices. All your USB components should be under Universal Serial Bus controllers.
Now let’s look inside each category to see what’s present on this HP laptop I’m using for the sake of example:
System Devices
Alas there are no System Devices listed here… That makes sense considering I have a laptop and none of those are internal core components (like RAM or Motherboard) but rather things like video card drivers that allow the motherboard to talk to an external monitor in addition to the builtin screen. There also used to be some other useful information when you’d select a USB device such as Media Transfer Protocol which was Windows’ version of UPnP devices. I’ve seen others post about running into issues with these and the new Windows 7 USB Device Preference Control panel, but from what I can tell if you’re just going to burn and rip CDs or stream music from an external hard drive it’s not something you need to fiddle with too much.
Non-Plug ‘N Play Drivers
Here we can see all the drivers that aren’t part of the core install for my particular laptop. The Bluetooth module (if enabled) would show up under this section as well since it is a non-pluggable device, meaning with enough effort you’d be able to disable it in order to use your own hardware rather than pay for a replacement from Dell (or in my case HP). The “Texas Instruments WDM Modem” and the “Broadcom 802.11 Network Adapter” were installed during the initial Windows 7 install as you likely well know, while the others are all additional software from HP that allows me to use their wireless devices such as this mouse or even a remote control for presentations.
Select System Preferences from the Apple menu, click the Accounts icon,
Click the Lock icon. and enter your password.
Select Logout from the Apple menu.
triple-check that all the files for all accounts on the old machine have been transferred.
As a final option, take the drastic step of deleting your account and all its data. Delete files securely before they are gone for good with the click of a button.
To delete an admin user on your Mac, go to System Preferences. Under the Users and Groups tab, click the name of the admin user you would like to delete. Click the “-” button in the lower-left corner of the window.
To delete a user account on a Mac, you’ll need to go into your System Preferences and then select Users & Groups. From there, you can click the lock icon in the bottom left corner of the window and enter your password when prompted. Once you’re in, click on the account that you want to delete and then select “Delete User.” You’ll be asked to provide your administrator password again before being able to delete the account.
To change your username on a Mac, you’ll need to go to System Preferences and click on Users & Groups. Click the lock in the bottom left corner of the window to make changes, then enter your password. Click the plus sign at the bottom left of the window to create a new user account. Enter all of your information for this new account and make sure to check “Allow user to administer this computer” before clicking Create User.