everyday mac tools

Delete a user account on a Mac without losing their files

· 7 min read

To delete a user account on a Mac, open System Settings, Users & Groups, click the info button next to the account and choose Delete User. macOS then asks what to do with that person’s home folder: save it as a disk image, leave it where it is, or delete it. Before you click, copy out anything the person wants to keep, have them turn off Find My Mac if they switched it on, and make sure you are signed in to a different administrator account.

Before you delete anything

A few minutes here saves the awkward conversations later.

  1. Use another administrator account. You cannot delete the account you are signed in to, and macOS will not let you remove the last administrator on the Mac. If the account you are removing is the only admin, create a new administrator account first and sign in to that.
  2. Log the person out. If they are still signed in in the background through fast user switching, macOS will not delete the account until they are logged out. Choose their name from the user menu or the login window and log out from there, or restart the Mac.
  3. Ask what they want to keep. The easiest time to move files is while you can still sign in as them. Have them, or you with their password, copy what matters to an external drive, or drag it into the Shared folder at /Users/Shared, which every account on the Mac can open.
  4. Release Find My Mac. If their Apple Account switched on Find My Mac, the Mac’s Activation Lock is tied to that account, and deleting the local user does not change that. Sign in as them, open System Settings, click their name at the top of the sidebar, then iCloud, and turn off Find My Mac (it asks for their Apple Account password). If they have already moved on, they can remove the Mac from their devices at iCloud.com.
  5. Back up first. If Time Machine is set up, run a backup now so there is a copy of the account as it stands.

Delete the account

  1. Choose Apple menu, System Settings, then Users & Groups in the sidebar.
  2. Click the info button next to the account you want to remove.
  3. Click Delete User and enter your administrator password when asked.
  4. Choose what happens to the home folder (the choices are explained below).
  5. Click Delete User again to confirm.

On older versions of macOS the steps differ slightly: you select the account and click the minus button below the list. The home folder choices are the same.

The three home folder choices

Save the home folder in a disk image. macOS packs the entire home folder into a disk image and puts it in /Users/Deleted Users. This is the safe choice when you are not sure whether anything inside matters. The catch is that the image takes space until someone deletes it, and on many Macs nobody ever does.

Don’t change the home folder. The folder stays in /Users, renamed with “(Deleted)” after the account name. It is easy to browse later and takes exactly as much space as before.

Delete the home folder. Everything in it is removed, and the space comes back. Copies survive only in backups.

If you are unsure, save the disk image and put a reminder in your calendar for a month from now to check it and delete it. A shared Mac: which user account is using all the space explains why forgotten images in Deleted Users are often the largest recoverable item on a family Mac.

Getting files out afterward

Open /Users/Deleted Users in Finder (Shift-Command-G, then type the path) and double-click the disk image. It mounts like any other; macOS may ask for an administrator password. If you kept the folder in place instead, open /Users and look for the name ending in “(Deleted)”.

Some folders inside may show a no-entry badge, because they still belong to the deleted account. For a folder left in place, select it, press Command-I, click the lock in Sharing & Permissions, add your account with the plus button and give it Read only access. For a disk image, which is read-only, copying in Terminal works:

sudo ditto "/Volumes/NAME/Documents" ~/Desktop/Recovered
sudo chown -R $(whoami) ~/Desktop/Recovered

Replace NAME with the name of the mounted image as it appears in Finder’s sidebar. The second line makes the copied files yours so you can open and edit them.

A few things will not come out usefully. Their saved passwords live in their keychain, which needs their password to open. Their iCloud data was never on the Mac alone; it stays in their Apple Account. A Photos library from their folder can be opened by holding Option as you open Photos and choosing it, though it is better to let the owner do that on their own Mac.

What deleting does not remove

  • Apps in the main Applications folder stay, because they are shared by every account. Apps the person installed only in their own folder go with it.
  • Their files in Time Machine remain in older backups until those backups age out.
  • Anything they put in /Users/Shared stays put.
  • Their Apple Account is untouched. Deleting the local account signs nothing out on Apple’s side and deletes no iCloud data.

To see where the space went once the account is gone, System Settings, General, Storage shows a category for other users and shared files; What the Other Users and Shared category means on a Mac explains what it counts.

Crumb audits the whole Mac rather than only the account you are signed in to. The read-only audit is free; the cross-user view of which account is using the space is part of the $9 one-time unlock, which also includes Uninstall, for removing an app the departed person installed along with every leftover it made. Nothing is deleted until you approve the plan Crumb shows you, which is the right default on a Mac more than one person has used.

Questions

Can I undo deleting an account? Not directly. If you chose to leave the home folder in place, rename it back to the original short account name, then create a new account with that same short name; macOS usually offers to use the existing folder. With a disk image, create a new account and copy the files across as above.

Why is the Delete User button not available? Usually because you are signed in to that account, the person is still logged in, or it is the last administrator account on the Mac.

Does deleting the account remove them from Family Sharing? No. Family Sharing belongs to Apple Accounts, not to accounts on a particular Mac. Change it from the family organizer’s settings.