Change of User Name and Change of User Folder Name

[qwerter18]

Good evening,

Situation:
I want to change the username (UN) and userfoldername (UFN)
I am on Macbook Pro - M1 Pro - 14.1.2 Sonoma.

What I have done already:
1. I created another Admin User and logged in with it. Changed UN and UFN to what I want. Signed in again with my main account, but names didnot change.

2. I restored from time machine backup, but I had no chance to change the name from there. But I could replace the existing user with the one from time machine, but its the same name, so nothing changed much, except that my new UFN is now UFN_1 with a _1 attatched.

3. I tried the method no 1 again after the restore... with multiple reboots, until I couldn't even log in anymore.

4. Last I deleted everything and did a fresh install of MacOS 14.1.2 and then used time machine to restore.

Now everything is up and running but in the same state like 8 hours ago...

Question:
Anyone who has successfully changed UN and UFN on Sonoma?
The instructions on youtube I found did not work so far...

Thank you

 

[Rich B22]

Don't know if you followed the same procedures, but here it is from the horse's mouth.

Change the name of your macOS user account and home folder - Apple Support

You can rename your macOS user account and home folder, which were named when the account was created.

support.apple.com

I have done this a couple of times with no issues.

Good luck

 

[qwerter18]

Thank you for your quick reply.

I did indeed update the way it is described for earliere MacOS systems. That might have been the fault alredy.
I will try the first way for Ventura and later!

Yay. It worked flawlessly!!! Thank you very much!
There seems to be a difference in both mehtods, though looking the sam at first glance.

Thank you!

 

[qwerter18]

Now I am left with the Test-Admin account I created.
CAN I JUST DELETE IT?

And in my newly named User Folder, there is another (kind of ghostish) folder, with my old user name...
CAN I DELETE IT SAFELY?
Or what's its purpose?

And time machine created a whole new complete backup with all harddisk space needed
HOW CAN I DELETE OLDER BACKUPS? Without erasing the whole drive... It takes ages to delete from finder.

 

[Fishrrman]

If you created a new "test" account (for testing purposes, of course), you might consider just "leaving it alone".

It probably takes up little space, and it's a good idea to KEEP AROUND an extra account with administrative privileges.

It could help if there ever arose a moment when you couldn't get logged into your regular account.

 

[qwerter18]

Good idea. I'll leave it alone...
The ghost folder I could delete, without any problems so far.

For the time machine backup I had to erase the complete drive...with ALL APFS disks on it.
Or else it wouldn't be recognized by MacOS as time machine drive.

But now everything up and running.
Thank you for help, again!