How to change system username via terminal

Question

Generally speaking, I have localadmin, which is an Administrator account, and I have X more Standard accounts. What I want to do, from this localadmin account, is change system usernames for other accounts via terminal.

Normally, this procedure would look like as if you went to System Preferences > Users & Groups and manually changed the username for those accounts.

Anyway, if you want to change username, then you will need this third-party admin account, since you are not able to change system username being on the account for what you want to change.

So, how can I change system username via terminal?

Thanks in advance!

Just admin account from which you will be changing username since it's impossible to change username of account being logged in to that account. — dokichan, Dec 22 '22 at 15:15

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 22 '22 at 15:25

1

To change the user with username user whose home folder is at /Users/user to user2 run

dscl . change /Users/user RecordName user user2

This doesn't change the user's home folder.

answered Dec 22 '22 at 15:25

grg

201,078

Note that the user will lose any group memberships (other than the "staff" group), because those are tracked by name. Most importantly, if they were an administrator (i.e. a member of the "admin" group) before the name change, they won't be under the new name. See "Changing my administrator user's username has removed privileges ". – Gordon Davisson Dec 22 '22 at 19:21

How to change system username via terminal

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