Previous user name in App Store

I have a 2020 MacBook Air that I have for my daughter. I have reformatted the hard drive and installed Monterey. When I go to the App Store it still has her username for apps that she downloaded that are no longer in the hard drive. How do I get rid of her name? I have tried all sorts of things from going into the preferences in the system folder as well as my library and there’s nothing there with her user name. I have tried using EasyFind and there is nothing. Any suggestions are welcome. I even tried using SuperUser.

Posted on Dec 1, 2021 7:42 AM

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Posted on Dec 1, 2021 3:20 PM

What your daughter needs to do is to sign out of iCloud/Apple ID on that device. This is what she should have done before turning it over to you - that is the only thing that will disassociate the device from her account.


https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201065

18 replies

Dec 1, 2021 9:31 PM in response to Cpat6d

I don't think my first Apple OS experience even had a name ... other than Apple ][ around 1978. We've both been at it a long time. Too long I feel sometimes.


At this point I'd wipe the drive again, install the OS from a flash drive and avoid the use of Setup or Migration Assistant. I'd sign in under my Apple ID and go about manually installing everything. Sometimes you just need start from scratch and do things the slow way so you can monitor 100% as you go along.

Dec 1, 2021 1:15 PM in response to Cpat6d

Did you use the Recovery Panel? Using the Recovery Panel to reinstall the OS would have replaced the OS but left user data, settings, and apps untouched.


If you did wipe the drive, there would be nothing left of the "old" system and you'd have to have taken some action to get data, apps and settings back after OS installation. A usual method to do that is TimeMachine via the Setup or Migration Assistant. That would essentially recreate your "old" system in its entirety and you'd be right back to where you started. If you didn't use TM, or some other data recovery approach, you'd have to have restored it all manually.


Again, after you wiped the drive, if you restored from TimeMachine, whose did you use? If you used your daughter's, you just made it her computer all over again.

Dec 1, 2021 6:55 PM in response to Cpat6d

You say that this does not work:


https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201065


That has worked in preparing a Mac for selling or giving away without problems for some time; now it could be that whatever was or wasn't done before you posted here has something to do with that fact. The "disassociation" of the device from your daughter's account needed to be done before the drive was erased and formatted. Just out of curiosity, did you format it APFS?


I have no idea why it wouldn't work; so my suggestion is that you contact Apple support - the link is in the upper right corner of this page. FWIW, I started with OS 7.5, but the newer OS versions are totally different in behavior.

Dec 1, 2021 4:36 PM in response to ku4hx

Yeah, I know; I don't know why the only method that works reliably is to follow step by step in Apple's instructions, but just signing out/in does not if you want to give away the device. It only works if you want to have 2 users on your MBP. Or, at least, that is how I understand the Apple ecosystem process, LOL

Dec 1, 2021 7:24 PM in response to babowa

A number of steps in the Apple article were not done so I think that is the problem. Also “ disassociation" of the device from your daughter's account was not done before the drive was erased and formatted. Tonight she went on to remove the drive from her Apple ID. Thanks for all your help.


Now that her ID no longer see the device I am going to follow the steps in the article and see what happens.

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Previous user name in App Store

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