I am unable to login to my account after making this change. I was trying to find an application using Terminal that was in my HD applications folder rather than my User Applications. I am afraid I have really messed something up. Please advise!
MacBook Pro 13″, 13.4
Here's what Apple has to say about that: Change the name of your macOS user account and home folder - Apple Support. Note the warning.
At this point you can try a reinstall of macOS: Reinstall macOS - Apple Support
Or as a last resort: Create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support
I have no idea if a restore from Time Machine will rectify the situation, but if you can login you can try: Restore your Mac from a backup - Apple Support
If you can't login, you can't create a new user.
Here's what Apple has to say about that: Change the name of your macOS user account and home folder - Apple Support. Note the warning.
At this point you can try a reinstall of macOS: Reinstall macOS - Apple Support
Or as a last resort: Create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support
I have no idea if a restore from Time Machine will rectify the situation, but if you can login you can try: Restore your Mac from a backup - Apple Support
If you can't login, you can't create a new user.
If you can create a new admin account, you could use that account to fix your other account's home folder.
In the future if you are play with this level of advanced user games, you should ALWAYS have a fresh full backup of your system you can restore from.
And already having a backup admin account is always useful.
And playing on a spare system you can sacrifice is even safer, because you can wipe it and start from scratch with only some wait time, but no loss of valuable data.
You can use the 'find' command from Terminal to search for things. It does not need you to change your home folder.
You can try using these instructions to run setup assistant again which can create a new admin user account:
Restarting Setup Assistant to create Admin user - Apple Community
Do I need to create a new admin account using Single User Mode? Or is there a way to restore from Time Machine?
Thanks for the response. I’m going to attempt the reinstall but it says an additional 11.83 GB of space is required on my hard drive. Any idea what to do now?
I wasn’t able to use Single User Mode to create a new admin account. Possibly it is disabled in newer OS? I am attempting to reinstall the MacOS.
Thank you, I was able to create a new admin account and correct the mistake I made, regaining access to the original account. Whew!
Changed Home Directory in Users & Groups advanced settings to / instead of Users/username
