Considered one of macOS’s most useful options—and its largest change from pre-OS X variations of macOS—is permitting a number of customers to have distinctive accounts on the identical laptop. Typically, nevertheless, you may determine solely after creating and utilizing an account for some time that you may want it break up into two or extra macOS logins.

Maybe you’ve gotten an account wherein you combined private and enterprise functions and determined that wanted to be separated out. Otherwise you had a single account for your loved ones, and within the pursuits of privateness and residential comity, you needed to separate these out.

Apple doesn’t have a “break up account” choice, because it’s maybe a uncommon factor its customers would need. But it surely’s not that troublesome ultimately. In my examples under, I take into account turning one account into two, however you could possibly additionally break up one into three or extra with the identical ideas.

Begin with these concerns:

• Will you share an Apple ID amongst these two macOS accounts, or will they use separate Apple ID accounts? You may additionally have separate Apple ID accounts for iCloud entry and a shared Apple ID account for purchases.
• Do you’ve gotten a number of data to separate, or is your data largely within the cloud?
• Do you wish to copy a considerable amount of information, akin to regionally saved pictures and movies, after which divvy them up between two accounts, or will they keep largely or fully in a single account?

Small quantity to repeat or cloud-based entry

You probably have a comparatively small quantity of fabric to maneuver or it’s virtually all within the cloud, right here’s how I counsel continuing.

Begin with a brand new person account:

1. Open the Customers & Teams choice pane.
2. Click on the lock icon within the lower-left nook and authenticate your self with Contact ID on geared up Macs or enter an administrator password.
3. Click on the plus (+) signal on the backside of the person record.
4. From the New Account record, choose Commonplace or Administrator, relying on the extent of permission you wish to give the brand new account.
5. Create a reputation for the person, an account identify, password and trace.
6. Click on Create Consumer.

Now out of your current account:

1. Create a brand new folder within the Customers > Shared folder.
2. Transfer or copy any materials you need out there to the brand new account to that nested folder within the Shared folder.
3. Choose that folder and select File > Get Information.
4. Beneath the Sharing & Permissions part, click on the lock and authenticate your self, click on the + on the bottom-left nook, and choose the brand new person account. Click on Choose.
5. Set that account’s entry to Learn & Write within the Privilege column.
6. Now click on the Extra … button on the backside of the data window and select Apply to Choose Gadgets. Click on OK.

Now you can log in to the brand new account and transfer these objects into that account’s dwelling listing in applicable places.

For any cloud-based accounts, log in with the suitable software program, by way of the Apple ID or iCloud choice pane, or the Web Accounts choice pane.

Quite a bit to repeat or to separate up

You probably have rather a lot to repeat, I counsel a extra difficult method that works out simpler ultimately: duplicating the account fully.

1. Make a Time Machine backup or use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone your startup quantity. (If you have already got a type of, carry out an replace so that you’ve the very newest state of the quantity.)
2. Launch Software > Utilities > Migration Assistant.
3. Warning! As quickly you click on the subsequent merchandise, Migration Assistant will sign off of all present packages. Be certain all the things lively is saved. Click on Proceed.
4. Select the Time Machine or startup disk choice, relying on whether or not you’re utilizing a Time Machine backup or a cloned quantity, and click on Proceed.
5. Choose what objects you wish to transfer within the Choose the Info To Switch record. Uncheck all the things besides the person account you wish to break up up. If the account is called Allison Allspice, be certain that solely Allison Allspice is chosen.
6. Click on Proceed.
7. As a result of the low-level person identify employed by the underlying Unix system is an identical, Migration Assistant will ask you the way to resolve the battle. Select to rename the account you’re importing, which can go away the unique account in place, and duplicate this copy of it to a brand new account.
8. Await the method to finish.

Now you possibly can:

• Take away media and paperwork out of your unique account that ought to solely seem within the new account.
• Change your iCloud login or logins if you happen to intend to change these for the present account.
• Log off of accounts solely meant for use within the new account.

As soon as full, select  > Log Out [account name] and log in to your new account. Carry out the identical operations in reverse for it, eradicating materials and accounts distinctive to your current account and including ones wanted for the brand new account.

This Mac 911 article is in response to a query submitted by Macworld reader Arielle.

Ask Mac 911

We’ve compiled a listing of the questions we get requested most continuously, together with solutions and hyperlinks to columns: learn our tremendous FAQ to see in case your query is roofed. If not, we’re at all times searching for new issues to resolve! E mail yours to mac911@macworld.com, together with display screen captures as applicable and whether or not you need your full identify used. Not each query shall be answered, we don’t reply to electronic mail, and we can’t present direct troubleshooting recommendation.