can a trackpad be reset?

1 Connect trackpad

2 Go to Bluetooth System Preference and right click on trackpad, don't click anything else yet. Leave it open

3 Turn off trackpad

4 Select "Rename" in the still open right click menu

5 Rename the trackpad and click "Rename" (or press Return key) the pop up

6 Turn device back on and connect. You may need to pair it again by connecting it to the computer with a USB to Lightning cable.

If you don't have an extra mouse or trackpad to do step 3, you can press the Option key five times to use Mouse Keys

Control the pointer using Mouse Keys on Mac - Apple Support

I need to know this too. My trackpad shows “Johnny Appleseed’s Trackpad” and I want to sell it with this removed. Renaming the bluetooth device only changes it temporarily. This is a big privacy issue for me as I don’t want to sell the device with a person’s name tied to it.

I have the same trackpad. I renamed it yesterday using that procedure on my Mac mini, then turned everything off. When I restarted today the trackpad still had the new name. Are you running the latest Mac OS (12.2.1)? Some earlier versions did have Blutooty issues, including renaming failures.

Are you using an administrator account? If not, you may have a button at the lower-left of Bluetooth system preference to login as administrator for the rtename to work.

I have Apple Trackpad 2 (model A1535). This doesn't work. I followed these steps exactly and turned off the trackpad and then back on again. I had my windows machine search for new bluetooth devices and it is still showing "Johnny Appleseed's Trackpad".

Can we please mark this as "unsolved"?

This only temporarily changes the naming. You can prove this by removing the connected device and reconnecting. The old name still shows up. It almost seems like Apple wrote the name of the person's account to the hardware of the trackpad after they first registered it with their account. This is a huge privacy concern.