How to change computer name so terminal displays it in Mac OS X Mountain Lion?

Question

When I setup my computer I named it "Scott's MacBook Pro". And so when I go to System preferences->Sharing, it says Scott's MacBook Pro there as my computer name. However, opening up a terminal gives me this prompt:

Last login: Sun Oct  7 11:02:49 on ttys003
new-host-4:~ scott$

When I login to Backblaze, they list my computer as "new‑host‑4_2012_10_07". Did I not fully set my computer name? Should I use the traditional hostname command?

To my knowledge this is what DNS reports it to be. If your IP-number does not have a name, the name from Preferences is used (perhaps the .local domain)) — Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen, Oct 07 '12 at 18:30
@ThorbjørnRavnAndersen - my .local domain from the Sharing preferences has been scotts-macbook-pro.local — at01, Oct 07 '12 at 20:15

score 396 · Answer 1 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

396

If you use:

sudo scutil --set HostName name-you-want

it will work a bit better. From the scutil(8) man page:

--get pref
    Retrieves the specified preference.  The current value will be
    reported on standard output.
Supported preferences include:
      ComputerName   The user-friendly name for the system.
      LocalHostName  The local (Bonjour) host name.
      HostName       The name associated with hostname(1) and gethostname(3).


--set pref [newval]
    Updates the specified preference with the new value.  If the new value is not
    specified on the command line then it will be read from standard input.
Supported preferences include: ComputerName LocalHostName HostName

The --set option requires super-user access.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Mar 24 '13 at 06:07

John

3,961

7

Worked for me after running that command and rebooting Terminal. – Johnathan Elmore Jul 28 '14 at 16:04
Worked as charm – mercury Mar 12 '17 at 01:56
This works for me, but upon rebooting, it then resets the hostname in the terminal back to what it was prior to me changing it. – jwir3 Oct 10 '18 at 15:56
Works in Mojave. The terminal was showing emulator02 even though I changed it in settings -- or tried. I just ran all three supported preferences and restarted terminal; now I can get the hostname right. – Daniel Feb 04 '19 at 19:11

score 170 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:45

170

After following Jeffrey J. Hoover's tip,

sudo scutil --set ComputerName "newname"
sudo scutil --set LocalHostName "newname"
sudo scutil --set HostName "newname"

I would add these last two steps.

Flush the DNS cache by typing: dscacheutil -flushcache
Restart your Mac.

EDIT: It didn't work for me until I restarted my mac.

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:45

Community

1

answered May 09 '13 at 04:29

Danger14

1,999

1

Are you a former Windows user, carrying over the practice of rebooting after every little change, or do you actually have evidence that it's necessary to restart? – iconoclast Aug 12 '14 at 19:37
2

@iconoclast Last used Windows primarily in 2004. Restarting worked for me and 16 other people. Wouldn't hurt. – Danger14 Aug 13 '14 at 19:31
10

Meaning it didn't work until you restarted? (Restarting *can* hurt when you actually do serious work on your computer, and therefore have lots of applications open. Getting everything back how you had it before reboot can be a *****.) Also, the fact that 16 people found some part of your answer helpful doesn't mean nothing worked until they restarted. – iconoclast Aug 13 '14 at 19:32
Yes, it didn't work until I restarted. Thanks for the info; didn't know it can be harmful. – Danger14 Aug 13 '14 at 19:34
17

Worked for me without restarting, just quit Terminal completely and re-open. – Alexander Wigmore Aug 20 '14 at 13:06
9

I first used scutil --get to discover that ComputerName and LocalHostName had been correctly set by using System Preferences (Sharing). However, it told me that HostName was not set. Thus, I just used sudo scutil --set in order to set HostName. Then, I didn't need to use dscacheutil or do a reboot as immediately a check of hostname showed that things were fixed for me and opening a new Terminal tab showed my prompt was now fixed too. (OS X 10.9.4) – Quintin Willison Aug 28 '14 at 08:13
4

You shouldn't even need to restart terminal to reflect the changes, just source the configuration responsible for your prompt. – Steve Buzonas Jan 20 '15 at 16:33
1

Why should we flush the DNS cache? – Mark A Sep 24 '18 at 02:21

jerrylroberts · Answer 3 · 2021-06-21T12:24:40.677

58

For those who are not looking for a command line solution, you can change it under

System Preferences -> Sharing -> Computer Name:

edited Jun 21 '21 at 12:24

answered Feb 28 '13 at 14:13

jerrylroberts

697

17

This didn't work for me. The name at terminal command prompt still remained as localhost – timurb Sep 05 '14 at 15:34
7

Did you restart the terminal? – Gon Mar 30 '16 at 06:09
I defs had to restart Terminal, but this was the easiest method. – skybondsor Nov 15 '17 at 17:47
This did not work for me because Terminal kept showing the old name. But, John's answer did solve it - on Mojave. – Rehmat Jul 10 '19 at 15:09
Catalina requires a reboot after following procedure. Renaming host successful – gatorback Aug 08 '20 at 17:49
4

This is the easiest and best solution. It just requires a restart once you're done – Django Reinhardt Oct 10 '20 at 11:31
Yep this is best, took 10 seconds, re-opened a new terminal window – Darren Broderick DBro Apr 20 '21 at 07:51

Maverik · Answer 4 · 2012-10-07T18:24:56.210

27

You can define what you want to see before the $ in your terminal by modifying the file ~/.profile.

For example if you add to the file ~/.profile the following line:

# h is the host name, w the complete path 
export PS1="\h:\w$ "

you will see the host name and the complete path of the current directory:

host_name:current_directory_path$

You can also modify my example by using the following options in the export command:

\d – Current date
\t – Current time
\h – Host name
\# – Command number
\u – User name
\W – Current working directory (i.e: Desktop/)
\w – Current working directory, full path (i.e: /Users/Admin/Desktop)

edited Oct 07 '12 at 18:24

answered Oct 07 '12 at 18:19

Maverik

5,829
6
50
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Why -1? He said that he cannot see its host name in the Terminal. – Maverik Oct 07 '12 at 18:38
4

wasn't me with the -1 :). Thank you for your answer, I guess I'm not just looking for how to change my name in the terminal, but clearly my computer is still referenced by the new-host-4 ugly name as services like Backblaze use it. My previous MacBook Pro had a nicer name that I chose, I don't know why my mountain lion MacBook Pro isn't using the name I have in the Sharing preferences – at01 Oct 07 '12 at 20:17

score 14 · Answer 5 · edited Feb 08 '13 at 05:06

14

You can run

sudo hostname Name-Of-My-Computer

in Terminal to change the name.

edited Feb 08 '13 at 05:06

nohillside

100,768

answered Feb 08 '13 at 01:05

Galas

141

9

The man page for hostname says to run scutil --set HostName name-of-host if you want to keep the hostname across reboots – daviewales Feb 08 '13 at 05:30
For me it worked very well, even restarting the computer. Thank You. – Brynner Ferreira Nov 06 '14 at 00:37
This worked for me after I restarted my Mac (running El Capitan) – Jader Feijo Dec 23 '15 at 15:52

score 7 · Answer 6 · edited Nov 16 '12 at 00:39

7

In my case, I found that it was a problem with our DNS server, as the reverse DNS lookup didn't scavenge because there was duplicate DNS entries for the IP address and hostname.

edited Nov 16 '12 at 00:39

Ethan Lee

3,994

answered Nov 13 '12 at 09:15

Chris Opperman

71

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 11 '12 at 06:27

I didn't do anything to my computer, but eventually for some reason the hostname and computer name all registered as the name I initially set! In fact I had the following terminal open the whole time and this is exactly a cut and paste:

new-host-4:~ scott$ hostname
new-host-4.home
new-host-4:~ scott$ hostname
Scotts-MacBook-Pro.local

score 2 · Answer 8 · edited Jan 16 '13 at 19:53

2

I am adding an answer here because I have recently run into this problem as well.

In OSX 10.7.4 and possibly prior, there appears to be a bug in the Edit Hostname option in the Sharing preference panel. It sets the hostname to the last thing set instead of the current this set.

I had to run sudo hostname [preferred hostname] in order to set it correctly, after setting it in Sharing.

edited Jan 16 '13 at 19:53

bassplayer7

14,106

answered Jan 16 '13 at 19:01

JDL

121
1

How to change computer name so terminal displays it in Mac OS X Mountain Lion?

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