The Unwanted Visitor Account
When you turn on your Mac or wake it from sleep, you are presented with the login screen. By default, alongside your own personal user account profile picture, macOS often displays a secondary account labelled “Guest User.”
This feature is designed so that a friend or colleague can quickly borrow your Mac to browse the web without needing your password, and without having access to your personal files. However, if you are the only person who ever uses your Mac, having this extra icon permanently sitting on your login screen is unnecessary visual clutter. Furthermore, some users prefer to completely lock down their machines for security reasons so that absolutely nobody can use the computer without a password. You can easily remove the Guest User option.
How to Disable the Guest User Account
You can turn off guest access in the Users & Groups settings.
- Click the Apple Logo in the top-left corner of your screen and select System Settings… (or System Preferences on older macOS versions).
- Scroll down the left-hand sidebar and click on Users & Groups.
- On the right side of the window, look for the account labelled Guest User.
- Click the small Information (i) button next to the Guest User name.
- A popup window will appear. Look for the toggle switch labelled “Allow guests to log in to this computer”.
- Toggle the switch to the Off position.
- You may be prompted to enter your Mac administrator password to confirm the change.
The next time you log out or restart your Mac, the Guest User icon will be completely gone, leaving only your personal account on a clean, secure login screen.