Guest user locked out in Catalina.

Question

Level 1

8 points

Guest user locked out in Catalina.

I just upgraded to Catalina on my 2012 MacBook Pro. The guest user no longer works, it is requiring a password I am sure I never set. What gives? Is this a bug? Is there a workaround?

Posted on Dec 6, 2019 10:18 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Old Toad

Level 10

207,817 points

Dec 6, 2019 10:39 AM in response to Cooper416

First boot into Safe Mode (Use Safe Mode to isolate issues with your Mac) and reboot normally. Then test the guest user.

NOTE: Safe Mode boot can take up to 10 minutes as it's doing some system cache cleaning, volume verifying and directory repairing.

Go into the System/Users & Groups preference pane and turn off the guest user:

Reboot and turn it back on. Then test again.

Reply

Answer 2

Cooper416 Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 6, 2019 11:20 AM in response to Cooper416

After finding no answers in the community, I decided to brave the labyrinth of Apple Support to see if they could answer my question. I decided to try the on line chat feature because in the past the other options have proved very clumsy.

I actually got a person to chat with in a few minutes. His name was Bryan. I described the problem (I upgraded to Catalina and it broke the guest account login) and he suggested the following workaround:

In Users and Groups, unlock the settings, choose the guest user and uncheck the box "Allow guests to login to this computer" and then recheck it.

I tried this and wonder of wonders it worked! This is clearly a bug.

I started another chat session so I could report success and was connected to Laura. I went thru the whole thing again so they would know the workaround worked. Kudos to Bryan and Laura.

Reply

Answer 3

LD150

Level 10

89,923 points

Dec 6, 2019 3:37 PM in response to Cooper416

What do you mean you got no answers here? OT just gave you that answer immediately before your post.

I also used forum Search for "guest user" filtered for the last year and found the same answer 3 times in a couple of pages

How about marking OT's post as solution for others to read?

Reply

Answer 4

Cooper416 Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 6, 2019 4:01 PM in response to LD150

What can I tell you, when I searched I didn't find anything. I guess you are a better searcher than me.

OT must have posted while I was working with Apple.

OT's post is a lot more work than what Apple told me and I didn't use it to solve my problem, so I won't mark it as a solution because I haven't tested it.

Reply