There are times when you want to hand your Mac to a friend or family member, but the first thing that comes into your mind is how to prevent your private files from being accessed. Fortunately, macOS allows users to create a guest account that is different from the personal/admin account that you use.

The guest account allows someone to use your Mac without having access to any of the files that are stored on your admin account. It also allows you to limit the things that can be done on a guest account. When a file is created or downloaded onto a guest account, it is stored temporarily and deleted automatically right after they log out.

Having a guest account is very useful when you’re handing your Mac to a friend as you can be sure that your private files won’t be accessed. Here’s how you can set up a guest user account on macOS.

How to Set Up a Guest User Account on macOS

Step 1: Click on the Apple logo and choose System Preferences.

Step 2: Click on Users & Groups.

Step 3: In the Users & Groups window, you will view a list of all the available user accounts on the left pane. Click on the lock icon to enable making changes.

Step 4: Enter your system password.

Step 5: Click on “Guest User” on the sidebar and then tick the checkbox that says “Allow guests to log in to this computer”.

Note: if you have FileVault enabled, then guest users can only access Safari and nothing else.

How to Add Restrictions to a Guest User Account

To limit the features of a guest account, you have to enable parental controls for that account. With parental controls, you can restrict guests from using certain apps, websites, built-in macOS features, and more.

Step 1: On the Users & Groups preferences window, choose “Guest User” and then tick the checkbox for “Enable parental controls”.

Step 2: Click on Open Parental Controls.

Step 3: Here you can choose the restrictions that should be applied to the guest user account.

Now that the guest account has been enabled, it will be available from the login screen and a password is not required for logging into the account. Once a guest user logs out, all the files and other information stored on that account will be deleted automatically.