OS X Mountain Lion Bible

Summary

OS X supports multiple user accounts. This lets businesses give IT staff administrator privileges on all Macs and lets parents establish separate accounts for their kids, guests, and others at home, so their applications and files are kept separate from each other. Each account can be given different privileges and access rights. You also can set up account groups, which makes file sharing easier to manage for all types of users.

The default user account has administrator privileges, giving it control over all other accounts. The default user should establish password protection on his or her account, as well as other users' accounts, to prevent misuse of the Mac by unauthorized users. Administrators also can set a master password that lets them reset users' passwords when users forget them and access accounts protected by disk encryption.

Users can adjust personal settings, such as the images used to represent them, as well as set up the applications that launch when they start or log in to their user accounts on the Mac.

You can switch among user accounts in several ways, including restarting the Mac into a different account, logging out of the current account and logging into a different account, and using the fast-switch capability to let a new user log in while keeping previously logged-in users' accounts active. In this third approach, applications continue to run for logged-out users.