If you wish to have a user account on your Mac that is discrete so others using your Mac cannot see that user, then you can do so by the classic methods of changing the user ID for the account and then adjusting some hidden system settings to manage those accounts at the login window. While these approaches are the most compatible across different OS X versions and still work for the latest ones, if you have OS X Yosemite or later on your Mac, then there is an easy two-step approach for hiding user accounts. Continue reading
How to hide a user in two steps in OS X Yosemite or later
1 Reply
When logging into a Mac you generally see your list of usernames that you can click, followed by a password entry field. While you can enable other features such as a the shutdown and restart buttons, as well as the system’s input menu, these are fairly static functions that offer utility but no additional information about the system. However, being able to identify a system at the login window may be useful, and in OS X there are two ways to accomplish this. 
Even though in most cases Apple’s Bonjour networking technology allows your Mac to discover relevant services that are broadcast by nearby systems (e.g., shared systems showing in the Finder sidebar), there are times when you may need to enter computer names manually to connect. In these cases, you will have to specify the full name of the system you are targeting, including its domain. For Mac systems, this means append the “.local” suffix to a computer name in order to target it on the local network. However, there is a quick way to avoid having to do this. 
One of the popular features of OS X is its built-in screenshot ability, where by pressing Shift-Command-3 you can capture an image of your current screen output to your desktop. This ability allows you to save a record of whatever you are looking at, which has numerous conveniences. By default screenshots will only capture what you see on your screen; however, if needed you can also take a screenshot of another user’s screen without needing to switch your view. 
As of OS X Yosemite, Apple is encouraging everyone to use its new Photos program for managing pictures in OS X. While Photos has a number of pros and cons, it does share a limitation of its “iPhoto” predecessor, in that while it uses a library system for managing photos and offers an option to create multiple libraries, it can only have one open at a time. This means that if you wish to consolidate libraries, you might find yourself jumping through hoops; however, there is a relatively simple way to get this done.