How To Add Or Remove Administrators On Mac

If you use your Mac for more than personal use, you may need to set up additional administrative users on your account at some point. And in some cases, you may need to remove users who previously had certain privileges on your device.

If you use your Mac for more than personal use, you may need to set up additional administrative users on your account at some point. And in some cases, you may need to remove users who previously had certain privileges on your device.

Fortunately, Apple allows you to do both without having to stress about it too much. Moreover, you can perform some actions in more than one way.

We'll show how to add or remove administrators to optimize your Mac . These tips will work no matter if you have an iMac, MacBook Air, or MacBook Pro.

How to add a Mac administrator using System Preferences

The easiest way to add a new administrator to your Mac is to go to System Preferences. You can access this by clicking on the Apple logo in the upper left corner and choosing System Preferences from the drop-down menu.

Once you do that, follow these steps to complete the admin setup process.

Step 1: Select Users and Groups in the second row in the dark gray section.

Step 2: Go to the bottom left of the window, where you will see a lock. Move the cursor here and click on the lock icon.

Step 3: Enter your administrator username and password. Then press Unlock or press Enter.

Step 4: Go to the + button , which you will find at the bottom of the white box on the left.

Step 5: Before filling in the details in the next window, open the drop-down menu next to New Account and select Administrator.

Step 6: Fill in the rest of the boxes and click on the Create User button.

Once you create a new administrator, the box next to “Allow the user to administer this computer” should already be checked. If not, you can do it yourself. All you have to do is click on the new admin and check the box.

How to remove Mac administrator using System Preferences

At some point, you may need to remove an administrator who previously had access to your Mac. If you want to do this using System Preferences , the process is pretty straightforward. All you have to do is follow the steps mentioned below.

Step 1: Head over to the Apple logo on the top left and click on it.

Step 2: Select System Preferences from the drop-down menu.

Step 3: Go to Users and Groups.

Step 4: Click on the lock in the lower left corner.

Step 5: Enter your admin username and password, then press Unlock or hit Enter.

Step 6: In the white box, go to the section titled Other users.

Step 7: Select the account you want to remove.

Step 8: At the bottom of this window, click the – button .

On the next page, you'll see a window asking if you want to save the main folder to a disk image - or if you want to either leave it as is or delete it. Make your choice and press Delete User.

How to remove users from a MAC using Terminal

You can also remove users from your Mac using Terminal on your device. These steps will show you how to do it; Follow them as planned.

Step 1: Go to the magnifying glass icon at the top right of your Mac toolbar.

Step 2: In the search bar, start typing Terminal and select Terminal from the results.

Step 3: Find your administrator using this command.

sudo /usr/bin/dscl . -delete "/Users/[username]"

So, in our example case, the command would be:

sudo /usr/bin/dscl . -delete "/Users/adminaccount"

Step 4: Press Enter and macOS will prompt you to add your administrator password.

Step 5: Enter your administrator password .

After entering the password, the administrator account will no longer appear in the list of users. If it does, then follow the steps we mentioned using System Preferences to fix the problem.

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If you are using your Mac for professional purposes, you will probably need to give access to another administrator at some point. And if you want to do it yourself, the process that we described in this article will take no more than a few minutes.

Likewise, you will likely need to remove administrators from your Mac at some point. Again, you can do this via System Preferences - or you can use Terminal. Neither option is difficult, so choose the one that works for you.