How do I delete my own account from an iMac? I want to give away or sell my old iMac; I've deleted all my personal files etc from it, but I need to delete my account, without completely wiping the hard drive, as there are some applications on there that whoever takes it may want.
I've found myself in 'Users', but there's no option to delete my account or log out.
Thanks for any advice!
iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.12
You don't have the legal right to give someone else apps that belong to you.
You need to follow Apple's instructions to prepare it for someone else.
What to do before you sell, give away, trade in, or recycle your Mac - Apple Support
Failure to do so means that the installed copy of macOS will still be tied to your apple account.
You don't have the legal right to give someone else apps that belong to you.
You need to follow Apple's instructions to prepare it for someone else.
What to do before you sell, give away, trade in, or recycle your Mac - Apple Support
Failure to do so means that the installed copy of macOS will still be tied to your apple account.
Apps downloaded from Apple's store will be tied to your Apple ID so although you could leave them on the Mac the new user probably won't be able to use them.
To reset your Mac for sale or transfer see here
Erase your Mac and reset it to factory settings – Apple Support (UK)
The problem is down to the age of your Mac and/or OS and the fact that Apple doesn't maintain installable copies of all old OS's. You could start by finding out which Mac you've got. Click the Apple Logo in the top LH corner and then "About this Mac". Just under the pic it will tell you the type of Mac and just underneath it will tell you the year it was built . With this info. and a bit of Googling you can find out the latest OS your Mac can run - like here
Once you've found this then some googling or back here you can find out if the OS is still available and signed and installable. So you might be able to reinstall the OS but if Sierra is the latest it can support then DI Johnson's earlier post implies it's going to be difficult, but you might be able to find a Sierra OS install with a bit of searching.
One option is that you could create a new account with admin privileges then use it to delete your old account and decline the option to save the old user data. This, in theory, deletes all your user data. You can then pass on the Mac and give the new owner the name and password of the new admin account so they can set the Mac up as they want. The only downside of this is that "in theory" is doing some heavy lifting here and there's a risk that some of your user data is still on the disc or recoverable from it and someone with specialist tools would almost certainly be able to get at some of it. I used this approach when I gave a family member my old Mac when I upgraded but I wouldn't do the same with a stranger. If you turned on Filevault then the new owner will need the keys.
Another option is to use it for something else. I've got a very old Macbook which I put Linux on and I use it to manage backups between my NAS's.
AliWonder wrote:
How do I delete my own account from an iMac? I want to give away or sell my old iMac; I've deleted all my personal files etc from it, but I need to delete my account, without completely wiping the hard drive, as there are some applications on there that whoever takes it may want.
You should check the license agreements for those apps. You may or may not have the right to pass them on.
I've found myself in 'Users', but there's no option to delete my account or log out.
Thanks for any advice!
You can only delete an administrator account if you're logged into a different administrator account.
From the Disk Utility screen you posted, simply go ahead and select Mac OS Extended (Journaled), select GUID partition scheme and then click Erase. That will wipe and reformat the startup drive.
However, reinstalling macOS Sierra or High Sierra is probably going to be problematic in itself as the web server for that High Sierra OS is broken - has been for some time, now. If Reinstall macOS offers something newer than Sierra, say Mojave, Catalina or even Ventura, then you may have a better go at reinstalling the OS.
If you wish to avoid any further frustration, I suggest you simply erase the drive, then either just give it away as-is or carry the old iMac to your local Apple Store, or Staples or Office Max and hand it over to be recycled. At best, that is a 2017 model iMac, at worst it's a 2009 iMac. Either way, it and every iMac in between is vintage or obsolete.
Hmmm.... This is puzzling; there is only one admin account for this computer! So if it's not possible to delete my own account, I assume the only option is to wipe the hard drive; how do I do this exactly?
(the apps are mostly free things I've downloaded).
Thanks
AliWonder wrote:
Hmmm.... This is puzzling; there is only one admin account for this computer! So if it's not possible to delete my own account, I assume the only option is to wipe the hard drive; how do I do this exactly?
Yup.
(the apps are mostly free things I've downloaded).
T\
It doesn't matter. Even if the price was $0, there is still a license agreement.
This process is a total nightmare. I've been round in circles at the link above; being sent back to the same pages repeatedly, & all the instructions are muddled & complicated. I eventually found 'Disk Utility'; the instructions say to select Mackintosh HD, & then in the next field 'Format' choose 'APFS'. But this doesn't appear - only the options you can see in the photo attached. I have NO idea what to do now 🤷🏻♀️.
OK - just realized you're on Sierra, which makes it a bit harder. The only way to do this with absolute security is to erase your disc and reinstall the OS. BUT you're best off waiting for someone else to come along here who can explain the ins and outs of it better than me cos the last time I did it was too long ago to remember.
The post below describes it but I don't know if it's still valid or even if Sierra is downloadable today. If you're lucky Johh Galt will post here to help.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7969376?sortBy=oldest_first
Sorry for the wild goose chase and good luck.
I was following the link you posted - it's just got so many different pages & sets of instructions it's really not clear which ones to follow. There's a bunch of stuff about signing out of iTunes / using it to deauthorise the computer, which I did, but how do I delete the downloaded music? When I highlighted all the downloaded tracks & hit 'delete' it said it would delete them from my other devices! I don't really want to leave all my music on this computer.
Then I got to 'Erase all content and settings' which seems to require a more recent OS, so then I went to 5 - 'start up from Recovery', which I did, then 'Use disk utility to erase your Mac' - which is how I got stuck at the screenshot I attached. I'm struggling to understand why it's so **** complicated just to erase a computer hard drive.... 🤦🏻
Thanks, that's helpful. So let me get this straight - there's no way to simply delete my account from the machine without completely wiping everything including removing the OS? This is quite insane! When you buy a new Mac it's 'empty' but it has an OS already installed otherwise it wouldn't function, right? That's where I was hoping to get to. It does actually work, & could be used if someone installs a couple more RAM.
Thanks 'sigh'. I'll try one of these. Unfortunately I can't keep this machine as I have a new one arriving today and I have zero space to put this one. I actually have installed the most up to date OS this computer can run; it's Sierra 10.12.6 🙁
This is needlessly mind-numbingly complicated. It should be way easier to do something so simple! I actually hate Apple for this kind of nonsense; every computer gets old but many still work - it should be far easier than this to wipe your own data. Anyway many thanks for all your help, much appreciated! 🙏🏼
What operating system have you got on your Mac?
Your Mac is too old to support APFS.
Read the article I linked to above.
Delete my user account from iMac without wiping HD?
