Home Forums Mac Software Mac Operating Systems A different kind of guest account in Lion

In Lion the integral Guest Account is permanent and reverts to the status quo ante when the guest logs out.

I would like to construct a "guest account" (with a simpleminded password such as 'guest') which would have all the specs of my user account. That is, I'd like to set up an account identical to my own, with all my applications, preferences, etc intact — and then customize it (by, say, removing personal files, certain applications, and so on).
Of course, I could always go the tedious route and set everything up from scratch, but I'd prefer a less time-consuming approach, if such exists.

It is there any way to do this? I can find nothing in Pogue's Missing Manual which addresses the issue.

The procedure must be simple and straightforward — no fancy stuff — something like ⌘-D when duplicating a document.

I can get you started, anyhow...

Create your guest account in /Applications/System Preferences > Accounts:

1. Click on the padlock and authenticate.
2. Click on the +.
3. Follow the instructions. (Presumably, you'll want to leave the "Allow user to administer this computer" box unchecked.

As far as applications go, unless you've created your own /Users/grelber/Apps folder, your apps are all located in /Apps and are available to anybody logged in to any account on your Mac. (You can make apps unavailable by moving them from /Apps to /Users/grelber/Apps, but it's generally not a good idea to do so with Apple apps, and some 3rd party apps won't be agreeable either.)

And as for duplicating your home account in the new account, I think I could concoct a seat of the pants method if push comes to shove, but I'll wait for push to come to shove.

You point up exactly the issues I wanted to avoid by starting from scratch. For example, I want to have my Firefox in the dock and then delete all personal bookmarks, leaving my personal set-up for FF otherwise intact. And so on.

Once somebody posts the most appropriate method for duplicating your original home account (Edit: i.e. /Users/grelber) in your new guest account you'll get precisely that, because all your personal prefs are located in /Users/grelber/Library.

I think I could work it out for you, but others are more knowledgeable, particularly as respects Lion.

Edit 2: Keep in mind that your new account will not sync with your existing account other than by your effort, i.e. any changes you make when logged in to /Users/grelber will not be replicated in /Users/guest.