Book Image

The macOS User Administration Guide

By : Herta Nava
Book Image

The macOS User Administration Guide

By: Herta Nava

Overview of this book

Apple is pushing the capabilities of its technologies to help users achieve high performance, including improvements in its OS running across all Mac systems, macOS, and new technologies such as M1 Silicon chips. This book walks you through macOS from a system administration and support point of view, exploring its latest features. The book starts by explaining macOS architecture, installation, and startup processes to enable you to get started with the OS. You'll learn how to manage users and discover techniques for user security and privacy. Moving on, you'll get to grips with the macOS file system and learn to manage disks, volumes, and partitions for effective file management. Most of the examples covered in this book are from an administrator's perspective; however, when relevant, a standard user's perspective is also presented. You'll find illustrations for Mac systems running macOS 11 (Big Sur), and when necessary, for macOS 10.15 (macOS Catalina). Finally, you'll explore advanced topics such as networking and using command-line tools for administration tasks. By the end of this macOS book, you'll be well-versed with macOS features, administration tasks, and best practices. You'll also be able to apply the concepts to increase your chances of success in obtaining Apple certifications such as Apple Certified Support Professional (ACSP).
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
18
About Packt

Understanding user home folders

When we create a user account, a home folder is created for every user, except for the Sharing Only user. This home folder is the user-space default folder structure and organization for files, directories, sharing folders, and even apps. It is important for the administrator, support expert, or advanced user to become familiar with the home folder's contents to understand how user accounts are created, how files are saved, how to use the sharing spaces, and how apps interact with these folders.

In this section, we will cover the following topics related to home folders:

  • The user home folder structure
  • Deleting home folders
  • Migrating and restoring home folders

Let's start by examining the user home folder structure.

The user home folder structure

The user home folder's default location is usually the /Users folder in the root of the system volume (Macintosh HD). The name of the home folder is the name of the user account. The currently...