Daft 'short name' now home folder. how can i change it?

Lt Major Burns

Lt Major Burns

"Dicky" Charlteston-Burns
How Do you change the Short Name? namely what macOS decides your home folder will be called.
when i was using panther it made it "tom" (lower case 't') and that was irritating as it just looked wrong. now i'm on tiger (clean install) it made my short name "six_seconds_tom" (the first half of my ancient email address from when i was 14). which looks even more daft as a home folder, and in all the paths and, well, all through the computer.

There must be a way to change this, in a .plist or something. please help - it's so bloody irritating. i've spotlight-ed it, and searched apple help


Sorry to duplicate, but it was going off topic on the other thread, so i've started a proper one. I've searched and i can't find anything on it.
 
so, i'm not the only one with a daft short name - why no capital letters? or why can't you put a façade on it? i now completely can't be bothered changing the short name
 
Create a new user account, make sure that your short name is how you want it to appear on your home folder (I use just my first name, capitalized).

Move all the contents of your old home folder to the new home folder. I would think that would work, it's basically what I do when I do a clean OS install.

(There may be some permissions issues, so you may need to first move the files to a shared folder.)
 
Lt Major Burns said:
There must be a way to change this, in a .plist or something. please help - it's so bloody irritating. i've spotlight-ed it, and searched apple help
Click to expand...

Changing one's short name is not to be taken lightly. "ChangeShortName" is my recommendation.
 
Well, you ought to be able to do it with netinfo manager - change the name of the account, the home directory, and any other fields in the account 'folder' that use the old short name. Just don't change the UID or GID fields.

Try this in a throwaway test account first though, by all means.
 
Hate to spoil all the fancy-app fun but you can change your home folder name by, gasp!, the same method that you'd use to change any other folder. That's right, go to your users folder and click the name! Wow, that was hard.
As for changing your shortname....the whole point in a shortname is that you can type it fast with no silly modifier keys needed, ie. to authenticate quckly, if you really want to change it to something with capitals etc then use you longname but take your surname off in System Preferences/Users
 

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ziess said:
Hate to spoil all the fancy-app fun but you can change your home folder name by, gasp!, the same method that you'd use to change any other folder.
Click to expand...

You might want to read the info provided in the link I posted--see #5.
 
ha ha ha ha ah ha!! god it was so simple! excuse me for being retarded. i'm not bothered about my shortname - just the appearance of the finder sidebar. thank you so much!
 
The Ghost said:
You might want to read the info provided in the link I posted--see #5.
Click to expand...

What info? All that's there is a book website with the only reference to changing short usernames a page about an app. There's no actual info.
Anyway, I've changed my home folder's name since X.3.1 and i've yet to have any problems.
 
ziess said:
What info? All that's there is a book website with the only reference to changing short usernames a page about an app. There's no actual info.
Anyway, I've changed my home folder's name since X.3.1 and i've yet to have any problems.
Click to expand...

That's quite an understatement. Please read more closely. Besides what is said on the on the link, it might be good to consider the "reference" you mention more carefully. Among other things, the "page about an app" says the following.

"Although it's easy to change your "full" username in Mac OS X (via Accounts preferences), you can't easily change your short username. Apple provides instructions on how to do this at http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106824, but I'm not a fan of their procedure. (It actually isn't complete.) In Mac OS X Power Tools (pages 54-58), I provide the most complete instructions available for changing the short username of an account; in fact, I provide multiple procedures you can use, depending on whether or not you want to log in using the root account in order to perform the procedure.
...

NOTE: It needs to be said that because changing the short username is a serious procedure, you should do it only as a last resort. The best option is to simply learn to live with your present short username. Or, if the account was just created, create a new account with the desired short username and then delete the "unwanted" account. That being said, if you're determined to actually change the short username of an account, read on."
 
i must add a post script.

if you change the name of the shortname on the side bar, the next time you log in, all your user setting will be archived and you will now be that new user you created. start from scratch.

no going back either, AFAIK
 
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