Changing your Mac’s Computer Name
How to, Mac OS X, Tips & Tricks - February 15th, 2007 - 34 Comments
Someone recently asked me how to change their Mac’s computer name because they were annoyed by the extra lengthy default in the ‘Computer Name’ screensaver. Although this individual was concerned about their screensaver, changing your Mac’s name is also important because that is how others will find you on a network, and it’s also what you will see by default in the OS X command line. Most of you probably know how to change their computer name already, but for those who don’t here is how.
Changing your Mac’s computer name:
- Launch ‘System Preferences’
- Click the ‘Sharing’ icon
- Type in what you want your Mac’s new computer name to be
- Close ‘System Preferences’ – it’s that easy
Name your Mac whatever you want, but you’ll want to keep it distinguishable from other Mac’s on your network. As mentioned earlier, this is also what you will see in the remarkably basic “Computer Name” screensaver. You also might want to consider how it will look with the default settings in the OS X command line, this image shows what the modified computer name looks like in the Terminal:
Thank you very much. I just picked up a used MacBook Pro 17″ computer from my brother-in-laws company. it had his companies name all over it… yet it is now my computer… was wondering how I could get it to reflect the new owner and this did the trick. Thank you again. Easy yet helpful.
I have just cloned a mac onto another mac and the computer name is greyed out. I cant change it and it is driving me insane….anyone got any ideas?
Finder, System Preferences, Sharing
Change Computer Name
~and/or~
Finder, System Preferences, Accounts
Change Name
@Marc: the computer name might be grayed out because the settings could be locked. Click the lock icon in the lower-left side of the window. You might be asked for the password… and voila! now the computer name can be edited.
@Marc: the computer name might be grayed out because the settings could be locked. Click the lock icon in the lower-left side of the window. You might be asked for the password… and voila! now the computer name can be edited.
I have a macbook pro 10.5.6 after changing name as you stated, it changes it for the computer screensaver name, but the old name is still what shows up in the sidebar, which is what is broadcast to other computers wirelessly.
help with sidebar name change please??
I just this minute set up my new mac book pro and after i clicked ‘continue’ it said choose a name (this cannot be changed later) – i think this is what your refering to. I just WISH i’d payed more attention as it took my computer name from the first part of the email address which is registered to iTunes. !! GRR
I just came back from the “genius” bar and got off the phone with Apple help. I had to explain to the guy on the phone that when you name your computer, the name is permanent! Anyway, the genius at the store upgraded my system and named it “administrator.” I have changed the Computer Name in all of the places listed above (I’m not an idiot) and still the finder and the House icon say “administrator.” So without speaking down to me, can someone please help me change this? Because clearly the genius and the Apple care guy on the phone cannot.
@melissa: Renaming your home folder is surprisingly easy. You can literally select it in Finder, click return, and overtype it. Do not do this, however! Doing so will result in a new user account being created the next time the computer is started. This is clearly not what you are after.
I did a quick search, which led to an article which linked to two useful pages. The first, http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1428?viewlocale=en_US, is Apple’s 40 step walk through on changing the user short name or home directory name. The second, http://homepage.mac.com/frakes/ChangeShortName.html, is a simpler alternative to the 40 step solution.
I hope these links prove useful.
I am a newbee myself but If you want to change the short name in Finder you probably should follow these intructions:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1428
Be sure to enable root login and then login as “other” with “root”/password
[...] Mac (a Macintosh LC) was also named Avalon, so I consider this MacBook Pro a part of its lineage. Changing the computer’s name was very easy, a task that’s never hard on any operating [...]
Thank you so much for putting this out there. I am so glad that I don’t have to stare at my ex-husbands name as my macbook’s name. I love you. God bless..
P.S. one good thing did come out of the relationship… I got the Mac!
Is there a way to change this attribute under terminal?
Is there a way to change this attribute under terminal?
thank you for this posting. I had a Macbook air which had that screensaver, but I always wondered why does it still show up that name and how do i change it? I am really glad that now whenever somebody sees my computer in screensaver mode, they don’t think that it’s someone elses.
Perfect! I needed to do this because it got changed when I updated to leopard. Thanks!
@jichi I was wondering the same thing. If you find out, please let me know too.
Cheers,
Brennan
@jichi Wow, ok so I was assuming the std unix/linux cmd wouldn’t work. I was wrong
So here it is, update your hostname via the cli:
$ hostname
your_hostname_spits_out
$ sudo hostname new_hostname
(Even an account w/full Admin privs will need to run the cmd w/sudo privs)
$ hostname
your_new_hostname_spits_out
I didn’t know it was that simple.
Thnx man.
I tried the hostname command and that changes the name. But after a reboot it all looks as it was before.
My computer name in System Preferences/Sharing is a perfectly logical name which I prefer to use. BUT when I open Terminal and for instance give the command “hostname -s” I get the totally weird name – “1e8bf16cb6904c6″. I don’t want to see this name anymore! You can’t ping it, you can’t do anything whith it. To ping my computer I use the name found in System/Preferences and that works fine.
I use Mac OS 10.2.6
Check if your hostname has spaces in it. Mine did and would print out a string of numbers in the terminal. I changed it to something without spaces and haven’t had a problem since.
Hey, I have a Mac running Snow Leopard, and whenever I connect to my home internet (via PPPoE) it changes my computer name to xyz.netvigator.com – does anyone know how to stop this? It is driving me insane because i get a new computer name everyday when I connect to the internet, and none of my home networking stuff is working.
Much Thanks
Thank you! So much easier than any of the other suggestions I have seen! Worked like a charm!
I really appreciate the website I credit the administration @ oxdaily.com for helping me out with getting to know the OS X Snow leopard. Thank you!
Thanks for help. It worked for me while changing system’s name in my computer
What a numpty I’ve been… Have searched HIGH & LOW on how to do this and didn’t realise how simple it is..
Many thanks,
Jon……..
http://www.by-jc.co.uk
Freelance photography & Video
Very useful
Hehe, *lol* – I have convinced several “PC”s and netbooks to run OS X flawlessly and probably know more about OS X inner workings than most typical “Mac users”, but THAT’s something I always forget… Now my new little Acer Revo Hackintosh does not any more have to bear the burden of being called “Admin’s Mac”…
for some fricken reason,
i don’t even have the frciken sharing icon!
*sigh*
So simple, yet so easy to miss. Thanks.
Now I have DaddyMac and MiniMac all intertwined. And none of my neighbors know whose they are.
Now how to I change the Itunes name? Okay that was quite easy. It’s in itunes Preferences
Thanks
so simple but very useful
thanks
I’ve been trying to find out how to do this for ages. This seems to work fine on 10.5.8:
In the Terminal use this, but please use ‘man scutil’ before you do anything.
a-macbook:~ matt$ su
Password:
bash-3.2# scutil –set ComputerName b-macbook
bash-3.2# scutil –set LocalHostName b-macbook
bash-3.2# scutil –set HostName b-macbook
This seems to change the hostname in the terminal and your System Preferences. I can connect from other computers on my home network fine using the new hostname.
Please don’t do this at work – play with it at home first.
My router (a BTHomeHub) still used the old hostname for my Mac but I think it uses the MAC address of the network card to identify my Mac – I am probably wrong here as I am not a network guru, just a lowly programmer. I changed my hostname on the hub manually, although everything worked without me doing that (which is why I think it uses the MAC address for previously connected computers? Anyone know?).
Please only try this if you have another computer nearby that you can use to get back on the internet and work out how to undo what you did, or use scutil to revert to your previous settings (ie write down your old hostname, or save it in a file somewhere, along with the 4 commands above).
NB scutil –get HostName returned nothing before I set it, to revert to your previous settings it may be sensible to set it to an empty string.
I couldn’t find a way of doing this in any of the LaunchDaemon files or anything in /System/Library or /Library by hand editing the XML.
Anyway, this worked for me after reboots on everything here.
Hope this helps.
Sorry strange font here – there should be two minus signs before get or set – ie: – - set or – - get. No space between them.