Mac OS Home Folder Capitalization

[Vincent South Florida]

How about a piece of tape, like the one I use for my check engine light?

 

[platinumaqua]

My user account dates back to Tiger and I was able to set it up with capital first letter

 

[Lloigorr]

My user account dates back to Leopard and I was able to set it up with capital first letter as well.

Also I didn‘t know there is such an issue with user accounts created in our modern times.

 

[bogdanw]

Also I didn‘t know there is such an issue with user accounts created in our modern times.

There is no issue, here’s new account creation in Monterey

 

[randomgeeza]

If you have set up your user 'karen', you may follow these steps:

1. In Preferences > Users & Groups, click the + button to create a new user. This can be anything. For this example, we use 'Bob' as the Account Name, the other fields don't matter. Go ahead and create the new user. Note that typing the new user, uppercase is accepted as a valid username.
2. Log out of 'karen'.
5. Log in as 'Bob'.
6. In Preferences > Users & Groups, click and select the initial 'karen' user, created in Step 1 during the Mac setup process, and click the - button. MAKE SURE you select 'Delete the home folder' radio button or this will cause issues. Do note that all your documents and files will be wiped, so make sure to save them. I don't think your applications will be touched, because they are not stored in your user's home folder but the macOS Applications folder.
7. Click the + button at the lower left to create a new user. We will use 'Karen'. MAKE SURE that the 'New Account' privilege is set as 'Administrator' in the drop down, as the default is 'Standard'. Under the 'Account Name' field, you can see text that says 'This will be used as the name for your home folder'. Great, because that's what we want right? Also, MAKE SURE that the name MUST be the same as what was input in Step 1. Do not deviate from this. For example, if the initial setup was 'karen', the user being created now MUST be 'Karen', with the 'K' being in uppercase. Enter the password you want to use for your actual account, and click 'Create User'.
8. Log out of 'Bob'.
9. You should see on the login screen, that there will be a username with the actual uppercase of the first letter, of your account name, which is great.
10. Login to your now newly created 'Karen' account, go to Preferences > Users & Groups, click the username 'Bob', and click the - button. MAKE SURE you select 'Delete the home folder' radio button.
11. You now have a proper account name with an uppercase name

Open terminal, type 'id' and check if your account has the UID of 501, and your username has the first letter capitalised.

This is your answer, right here ^^^^^^

 

[kc9hzn]

If copy-pasting sudo mv /Users/karen /Users/Karen in Terminal is “too complicated” or “too risky”, here is a risk-free visual solution. Create an alias to /Users/karen and rename it Karen, remove karen from the sidebar, drag the Karen alias in the sidebar. Problem solved.

I reckon, from the perspective of “better safe than sorry”, if you need to be told the terminal command to change the case of a directory (or really, any sudo command), you probably don’t have any business changing the the user directory’s name. That is, if you’re not already comfortable with the Unix terminal, if you don’t understand concepts like case preserving, case insensitive file systems, or things like that, you’re probably not technically savvy enough to handle any issues that might come up from changing your home directory’s name.

Besides, changing it in the terminal without changing the short name probably isn’t the way to go, even if you are a more technically proficient user. Because it’s the sort of configuration change that could lead to subtle behavior changes and unusual bugs you’ve never experienced. It’s quite possible that changing the directory name without changing the short name could result in weird, hard to detect bugs. There’s probably a way to change the user settings via Unix terminal user management, which is beyond my Unix experience.

 

[bogdanw]

It’s quite possible that changing the directory name without changing the short name could result in weird, hard to detect bugs.

If I can’t test myself the Terminal commands I post, I make a note.
In this case, I’ve tested it and I didn’t see any problems after log out or restart.
As explained through Apple’s documentation, APFS is by default case insensitive https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mac-os-home-folder-capitalization.2345558/post-31119414