Anyone had luck changing user shortname on Yosemite?

[tiptopolive]

It seems like a potentially dangerous process, could screw up permissions for all files and apps. I'd really like to change my short name (the name of the home folder), but I'm trying to weigh risk vs. reward here. Anyone been able to do it successfully, or had any horror stories? (Here's Apple's guide: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201548)

I might be getting a new MBP soon, so I might just wait till then and create a new user from scratch.

Thanks.

 

[mag01]

Done that (the same procedure just via own script), no problem.
Standard (POSIX) permissions are bound to POSIX IDs (UID or GID depending on whether it's user or group)
ACLs are bound to UUIDs (in some implementations they're called GUIDs).

Neither of these make direct use of user name strings so they can be quite easily modified (those above mentioned IDs would stay untouched in this case)
Modifying those above IDs is where things may become complicated, but this isn't the case.

 

[KALLT]

I did it about a month ago. It wasn’t as smooth as I expected, but I think it ended up fine. Be sure to make a backup with Time Machine though. At first I thought Finder was reset, but it went away after a reboot. I also verified my disk permissions just in case.

I had problems with some third-party applications like Dropbox and Transmission, both of which have set a default folder somewhere in a preference file. Dropbox was a real pain though, it refused to load and let me change the default folder in preferences. I had to delete it completely, including some hidden files. There wasn’t much guidance on Dropbox’ website for this. Depending on your configuration and applications, this could cause a headache, so I wouldn’t do this as lightly anymore.

 

[mag01]

Yes that's what I wanted to add, but forgot that in the end.

There are 3rd party apps which are let's say "poorly written" and make use of usernames or absolute paths (which then contain these usernames) for various purposes. Though things shouldn't be ideally implemented these ways, the reality is they are.

So having a way to revert this modification in the case of issues that you're unable to quickly solve (it's not worth to spend much time on this) is definitely essential.