Permanently delete (not disable) Guest user

I really don't want the Guest user on my computer even if it allows Find My Mac to work or whatever. Deleting Guest > Find My Mac for me.

I want to be unable to login to Guest with the only way to restore it being a complete reinstall of the OS.

I've tried 'rm -rf /Users/Guest', dscl . delete /Users/Guest, and tried putting random things into the Advanced Options for Guest under Users & Groups, but the Guest account still works.

I'm using FileVault so the Guest account is Safari only and requires a restart.

blinkums

Posted 2016-09-30T13:30:09.060

Reputation: 21

system prefs > users & groups > [unlock] >Guest User > uncheck Allow guests... No-one but another admin can reinstate that. Whatever else you try to do another admin could undo anyway. – Tetsujin – 2016-09-30T14:11:37.860

I'm the only admin so I'm looking for a way to permanently corrupt the account or otherwise make it inaccessible. That option only temporarily disables it. – blinkums – 2016-09-30T14:17:41.870

The FileVault Guest account runs from the Recovery Disk, not the main volume, so you'd have to go dig it out from there is you really want rid of your only way of tracking the machine should it be stolen... – Tetsujin – 2016-09-30T15:34:50.273

Answers

The "Guest account" you're seeing is not a real account -- it has no home directory, no permanent file storage, and no access to your files anything else on your computer. It has nothing at all to do with the Guest account you can enable and disable in the Users & Groups preferences, or with /Users/Guest. It's there because you have both FileVault and Find My Mac turned on.

It's there as bait. If someone steals your computer, Apple wants to tempt the thief into connecting it to the Internet, so you can track, erase, etc it. With FileVault on, there's no way for the thief to start it up normally without your password, so Find My Mac would be kind of useless. Apple enables this fake guest account as a way for a thief to sort of start it up, get online, and get tracked.

Gordon Davisson

Posted 2016-09-30T13:30:09.060

Reputation: 28 538

Disabled FileVault, and the Guest user seems to be completely gone. I had run sudo dscl . delete /Users/Guest beforehand so that may have been what did it. Of course I would prefer to have FileVault, but it seems too difficult to permanently disable Guest with FileVault on.

Thanks to Tetsujin for the idea.

blinkums

Posted 2016-09-30T13:30:09.060

Reputation: 21

These steps seems to work in High Sierra:

Disable Guest User from Users & Groups in System Preferences.
Run command from Terminal: sudo dscl . delete /Users/Guest
Reboot.

There is no need to disable encryption.

adib

Posted 2016-09-30T13:30:09.060

Reputation: 245

2When running the dscl command I get delete: Invalid Path <dscl_cmd> DS Error: -14009 (eDSUnknownNodeName) – Andersos – 2017-11-30T17:23:22.227

Permanently delete (not disable) Guest user - macOS Sierra

Answers