macfidelity

Ugly topic but in some cases needed: hiding user-account in a login window dialog

In the Windows world i usualy realize that using TweakUI …. a small tool by Microsoft to offer easy access to some hidden Preferences / Settings out of the PowerToys Series

Question:

But how do you realize that with Mac OS X ?

Well i reached the point today at work, so lets share the solution i found in the web.

Short Answer:

The login dialog preferences in 10.4 and 10.5 supports a setting called HiddenUserList

Long Answer:

Note: accountX stand for users shortname

To hide a single user from the login window enter the following in Terminal.app

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow \
HiddenUsersList -array-add account1

To hide several users enter the following:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow \
HiddenUsersList -array-add account1 account2

To unhide all users enter the following:

sudo defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow \
HiddenUsersList

Links:

• Microsoft PowerToys
• MacOsXHints.com about hiding users

• howto add applications to OS-X autostart or in mac-language howto define login items
• Mac ::: Howto force a really really quick logout to restart your Desktop environment
• 10.5 ::: Change Leopards Login Wallpaper - Part 2

This entry was posted on Monday, May 26th, 2008 at 8:49 pm and is filed under _english, mac, windows. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.