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 is simple, here’s how:

• Launch ‘System Preferences’
• Click the ‘Sharing’ icon
• Type in what you want your 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: