Renaming Home Folder?

I recently got my MacBook reformatted and I would like to rename my home folder to my name. How would I go about this? I am running Snow Leopard 10.6.4.
Thanks!

Open the Accounts pane of System Preferences, unlock it, control-click your account, choose Advanced Options, change it, restart, and then move everything you can from the old home folder to the new one.
(52457)

Similar Messages

  • I Renamed Home Folder and lost all settings, jpgs, mp3s, photos etc. HELP!

    First off, have a MacBook, 2.4GHz Intel Core Duo w/4GBs of RAM OS 10.5.8
    I followed what I thought were proper procedures to change the name of the Home Folder from "macbook" to "rocki"
    I followed the instructions at Mac OS X v10.6 and earlier: How to change user account name or home directory name
    For Mac OS X 10.5 or later
    1. Enable the root user.
    2. Log in as root.
    3. Navigate to the /Users folder.
    4. Select the Home folder with the short name you want to change, and rename it just like you would rename any folder. Keep in mind that the shortname must be all lowercase, with no spaces, and only contain letters.
    At this point I skipped steps 5 & 6 Since I already had a user named the name I wanted "Rocki" I thought I didn't need to do this. So went onto Steps 7-9, and NO everything was NOT there.
    5. Use the Accounts pane in System Preferences to create a new user with the Account name or Short Name that you used in the previous step.
    6. Click OK when "A folder in the Users folder already has the name 'account name'. Would you like to use that folder as the Home folder for this user account?" Note: This will correct the ownership of all files in the Home folder, and avoid permissions issues with the contents.
    7. Choose Log Out from the Apple menu.
    8. Log in as the newly created user. You should be able to access all of your original files (on the desktop, in Documents, and in the other folders of this Home).
    9. After verifying that your data is as expected, you can delete the original user account via the Accounts pane of System Preferences. At this point I skipped step 10 b/c nothing was there as usual.
    10. Disable the root user.
    All my data and settings were not there. So I went back logged in as Root, navigated to the Users folder, and saw that there were two folders, one said "macbook" even though I previously just named it and there was also another folder named "rocki" there. Seeing two folders and wanting to return back to normal I deleted that "rocki" folder, I had just created, and logged back out of root and logged back into the only user I had, which was also named "rocki" which is the admin and the user that had all my files and settings originally before I tried to change the name of the home folder. And no change, everything is gone and missing.
    To clarify, originally, I had a home folder named MacBook and a user named Rocki. Everything was cool and worked great! But I wanted to change that home folder name to match the user name. Whoops!
    What can I do to go back to normal?!?!?!!?!? Please help me!! I'm so screwed. If I can't go back to normal, how do I find all the missing files and what not?!?
    Thanks so much in advance! 

    Apparent 'Loss' of Home Folder:
    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107854

  • Renamed home folder but now can't see time machine backups

    Per instructions from Apple forum , i renamed my home folder from Home to <myname>.  In so doing, the home folder did not get renamed on my time machine backups backed up over time capsule.  How do I either rename my home folders on my backups or "connect" my new account name to my old account name backups?

    Pondini has some instructions for inheriting old backups.
    See B5 and B6 here.
    http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
    In the end.. you might find nothing works.. and directly altering the TM backup is really not going to work.. so you may end up needing to do a wipe and restart with a fresh clean backup.
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  • User account missing files and preferences??  Not from renaming home folder

    Hi all,
    After some strange behaviour in Apple Color, upon rebooting, my user account has returned to default. I had many items on the desktop and various subfolders in the documents folder. All pictures. Music. All are now gone. Desktop and dock have been reset to default.
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    Maybe its somehow related but I definitely did not rename any of these things myself. And there is no duplicated user account with all my files in it.
    Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated.
    Cheers
    Nate
    ps. Is it possible to restore the system to an earlier time like in Windows?
    I've read somewhere that a Previous System folder exists and it might be possible with Disk Utility but I can't find this folder anywhere.
    Message was edited by: stoney23

    Hi there,
    Thanks for the reply. I've managed to restore most of my important stuff using a file recovery software so I'm at peace with the loss of only a few files now. I'll just have to start rebuilding my dock and preferences again now which is not the end of the world.
    After a bit of thinking about it I'm 95% sure this is what happened.
    Color tried to save an image file with the same name as the folder I had made storing all my Color project saves. The folder was called Post. I'm not quite sure how its possible but it managed to overwrite the folder with the new image file. Now there is a Color image file (with no extension) there called Post and no folder.
    Then I tried to save the Color project and of course it told me the project directory was missing and it will create a new one. I'm guessing this is when Color bulldozed through my user account to create the folder Color Documents where it DIDN'T save the file anyway
    Leaving me with a default user account deleting everything that was 'added' to the account previously.
    It also created another user account called 'root' in which there is also only a Color Library/preferences and documents folder
    Is that normal that things like that can just happen?
    I guess from here I will just try and finish my project and afterwards do a re-install of the OS just to be sure - checking the Archive and Install option this time
    Unless you have any other ideas from what I've told you.
    Thanks again for replying
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  • Rename home folder

    Hi,
    I have set up my new Mac and stupidly when I set it up I spelt my name in lower case, so now in finder (places) my directory is in lower case, see:
    http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3191/3025439421e2468333c5o.png
    If I do this in Terminal:
    *sudo mv gavsta Gavsta*
    Whats likely to happen?

    Gavsta wrote:
    Hi,
    I have set up my new Mac and stupidly when I set it up I spelt my name in lower case, so now in finder (places) my directory is in lower case, see:
    http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3191/3025439421e2468333c5o.png
    If I do this in Terminal:
    *sudo mv gavsta Gavsta*
    Whats likely to happen?
    Many of us have our names in all lower case. I think it's preferred. I would not change it.

  • I renamed my home folder :( can't get it back to normal

    hi, i know there are about a billion topics in this forum about this same thing, but i still cannot get everything back to normal despite reading a lot of them.
    a couple of weeks ago i renamed my home folder, which created a whole new set of preferences.
    i've done some things since then, but i can't remember every step i've taken so bare with me! maybe you clever people can figure out what i've missed out/done wrong.
    i remember that in the users folder i renamed the new (incorrect) folder to Stephen_new, and changed the old (correct) one to Stephen. - this was as instructed to by http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107854.
    I also copied the whole library folder from the home > Stephen > library to the home > library folder, as instructed on step 3 on this website http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/renamehomerecovery.html (i presumed by 'home > library > library they meant home > Stephen > library). This gave me back my bookmarks and stuff.
    however, in the home folder there was only library and desktop. now, when i add something to a folder (say movies) through mac hd > users > stephen > movies (or the shortcut on the left of finder) it creates a new movies folder in the home directory, and copies the file there too. i.e. the file is in 2 places.
    also on the left of finder the icons for movies etc. have all gone back to blue folder icons.
    so basically the problem is before if i wanted to go to documents it would be right in my home folder, but now i have to go mac hd > users > Stephen > documents to get there, or i could make a shortcut on the left of finder.
    i'm not sure how to tell which users folder i'm actually using, Stephen or Stephen_new. I'm guessing it's Stephen as new files seem to save there.
    i would guess that i need to change my users folder to the name of my home folder icon, but you can't have 2 things the same name in the same folder.
    i created a topic at appleinsider.com's forums, which no one replied to. maybe some of the info there could help you figure it out
    http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?t=71584
    thank you very much for any help you can give me. if anything is unclear please ask me to explain further.
    ibook g4   Mac OS X (10.4.8)  

    hello again,
    i didn't really dare to delete the blue home folders before, just in case everything went wrong, but now i think i have so little space that i can't afford to lose 2.25gb!
    one thing that slightly worries me is the fact that the 'proper' library folder (in the home icon) is 2.09gb, whereas the 'wrong' one (from the blue folder forenamesurname) is 2.24gb - this is the one i would be deleting. just seems odd to delete a larger file than the one i presume i'm using.
    "Move everything you want to keep out of the blue folders, and then place both of the folders on your desktop. If everything works properly after a few days, delete both folders. If you are asked for your administrator password at any point or if either folder is copied instead of moved when dragged, don't delete that folder."
    by 'everything you want to keep', does this include the library folder? 'cause there doesn't seem to be much else, and i'm not sure if deleting the library folder would ruin all my preferences.
    i've put both of the folders on the desktop, it didn't ask for the admin password or try to copy them, so i guess that's good news. what kind of things should i be looking out for to act differently?
    are the folders not in use now that they are on the desktop?
    also if i put them in the trash will they have no effect? i.e. the same as permanently deleting them, so i could put them in the trash as a test.
    cheers, stephen.

  • How do I Rename Mac Hard Drive with Home Folder Only?

    Hello,
    I have a Macbook Pro with an SSD which has OSX Snow Leopard and my Applications, and the other hard drive has my Home Folder. I replaced the optical drive with the SSD.
    The other hard drive has the standard name of 'Macintosh HD'. I need to change it to something without spaces in order to get some developer software to work (i.e., it can't have spaces in the workspace name, and now that my Home folder is on a drive that doesn't have OSX, it refers to it as '/Volumes/Macintosh HD/.../...'
    I ran into a disaster by simply changing the 'Macintosh HD' name to 'MacintoshHD' - It prevented me from logging in and I had to use the OSX Install disk to use the command line to rename the hard drive back to 'Macintosh HD'. My guess is because my account was referencing a home folder location that no longer existed.
    My question is how can I rename my hard drive with my Home Folder? Can I change the hard drive name, and then immediately change my Account to reference the new hard drive name (and thus the new location of my home folder), and then reboot? Will this work if I do this in this order? Or is there another way to handle this entirely?
    I'm very hesitant to try this again as I don't want to have to go back and use the OSX install disk - my SSD took the place of the optical drive and I have to go and take it out, put it back in...etc.
    Any help is appreciated.
    Regards
    Chicago29

    I don't have a setup to test this, but you might try the following:
    Create a second "normal" admin account with its home folder on the boot drive, then log out of your regular account and log into the new one. From there you could rename the large hard drive, then go to System Preferences>Accounts, select the first account, then right-click>Advanced options to change its home directory path to match the new HD name. That way you're not changing the home folder path "in mid-air."
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  • HT1428 How do I revert settings from renaming the home folder?

    *PREFACE* I've read plenty of articles today on why NOT to attempt to rename the home folder.. This was done mistakenly by a friend attempting to help with my wifes macbook air.
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    On a scale of 1-5 in terms of knowledge, I'm about a 3. I'm faily new to Mac computing, but I own several other Mac products. I haven't had to replace my current PC laptop (yet, but its days are VERY numbered), but intend to go Mac from that point on. I hope all of this gives someone smarter than me enough information on what my situation is and hopefully how to solve it! Thanks!!

    Problem solved, time capsule worked!

  • Can I rename the Home folder

    I recently had my 15" MacBook Pro serviced because of a hard drive failure. It required that the operating system (OSX 10.7.3) be reinstalled. The reinstall was handled by the Best Buy Geek Squad store where I originally purchased the Mac. They named my home folder using only my first name in lower case letters. I would prefer my full name like my previous install.  DoI understand correctly that it is NOT possible to rename this folder? Would I have to reinstall Lion and wipe all the data to do this? Or is there a simple way to rename the folder.
    Thanks in advance,
    Anthony

    Depending on whether your files are in that account or not, create a new one or open the Users & Groups pane of System Preferences, unlock it, control-click your account, choose Advanced Options, and change it.
    (64837)

  • Home Folder Disappeared – not renamed, FileVault issue?

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    Sorted it... just about.
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  • Home folder/shortname rename problem

    So I've run into a bit of a problem with my home folder now. It started when I made my shortname something that I didn't want and so I tried to change it. I tried to do so in the finder side menu by just renaming it. Little did I know that this was the completely wrong way to go about it. I've tried to change it twice too before I really realized what was happening. So now in my Users folder, I have my short name main user folder as well as two other folders that are not associated with any user accounts. Upon making the switch each time, data moved to the new folder and is no longer in the original. The special windows on the left side menu of the finder window have also changed to default folder icons instead of the special music, movies, documents, and pictures icons.
    So basically, I need help restoring everything back to the way it was (one home folder in the Users folder) without losing any of the data that's in each of the new "home folders". Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.
    Geoff

    Hi,
    There is a much simpler way:
    Go to your finder
    Select Help
    Enter "Rename Home"
    Read the first Support Article
    Here is an extract of this article:
    - In the Finder, go to the /Users folder.
    - Locate the new home directory, which bears the users' short name.
    - Add "_new" to the new home directory's name.
    - Rename the old home directory to the user's correct short name.
    - Log out and back in with the affected user account.
    Hope that helps

  • Home folder: can't "rename" in finder per step 3 in Apple's HT1428

    Ran Setup Assistant on a new MacBook Air and transferred everything (settings and all) over from my old computer (disabled) using its Time Capsule backup during Setup Assistant's original (and only) run.
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    I don't see anything different about yours from mine. I have no problem renaming another account home folder.
    All the reasons I can guess at for it not being available you seem to have verified.
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    0: group:everyone deny delete
    In the first line of the output, you should see a - between "staff" and the file size number.
    There isn't any difference between the move command and doing it with the Finder, except the safety of not typing anything wrong. I imagine the Finder calls mv when it renames, but I don't know for sure.

  • Rename original home folder after Set Up

    I just set up a brand new Pro in a computer lab. I installed Adobe Master Collection, Final Cut, ProTool, etc. It took days....
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    There might be some permissions issues with the name change. Unfortunately, I do not recall whether I changed the name of a user home folder or used the migration assistant to transfer things to a different user account, but I wound up having to clean up a lot of permissions problems so be sure to check that out before you turn it over to the intended user.
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  • The name of my Home folder didn't change when I renamed my Account.

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    Thank you!

    I "renamed" my user accounts by going into the System Preferences then Accounts then changed the Full Name.
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  • Corrupted iSync Items after renaming the Home folder

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