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How do I change my Mac's name on the network?

I just bought a used iMac and am frustrated to find that it identifies itself as "Susie's Q" on the network. Since I'm not Susie - and never have been! - I really want to change this. How do I change my iMac's name in Mac OS X on the network?

Dave's Answer:

The way that Mac OS X and its underlying Unix foundation are designed, it's relatively easy to set up account and computer names and related on first run, but can be quite complicated to change them once you've gotten apps installed, documents created and otherwise have used the machine for a while.

In fact, I recently changed the admin account on a MacBook, including the home directory, and it took almost half an hour of careful steps, most done from the Terminal at the command line, before I was convinced it was done correctly and wouldn't blow up on the new owner of the system when they tried to restart or log in. (if you're trying to do that, you might well find that the Apple support docs are insufficient for 10.5 and above too)

Changing the name of your used iMac on the network shouldn't be quite so difficult because there's a place in the System Preferences to do just that, but what is a bit tricky is that you have to change the name twice for it to work.

First off, go to Apple --> System Preferences.... You'll see this:

apple mac system preferences

What you seek here is "Sharing", almost exactly dead-center in the window.

Click on it and you'll jump into the sharing configuration window:

apple mac system preferences sharing

As you can see, I already have a name collision on my network, which is why this computer is identifying itself as "Dave's MacBook Pro (2)": the "(2)" is added by Mac OS X when it finds another computer on the network with the same name. Not so good, but let's fix things in order. First, click on the "Edit..." button:

apple mac system preferences sharing edit name

Change the computer name here to what you want to have as your computer's identity on the local network, and click "OK".

Now, while you're at the main Sharing window, change the name here too:

apple mac system preferences sharing edit name 2

If you close this window and restart the computer, you should find that your iMac now identifies itself with the new name you've specified.

Good luck with your new Apple iMac!




Categorized: Mac OS X Help   (Article 8950, Written by )
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Comments

Don't know how old this post is, but you just saved my sunday morning as I was importing my settings and apps with the migration assistant to my new MacBook Pro from mi iMac (both OS X 10.6.2). In my network I had than an "iMac Dani" and "iMac (2)" which was a bit annoying. Followed your steps and now it's fine :-) I did not even had to restart my Macs in order to see their new names in the shared panel. Thank you for that little tutorial.

Posted by: Dani at November 22, 2009 4:31 AM

Unfortunately there are a number of issues with the Network Name not changing on Snow Leopard (as of 10.6.2), even if you follow these instructions.

There are two solutions to this, you can either a) reinstall Mac OS to create a new name for your Mac - this is the most reliable but the most cumbersome; or b) you can manually edit each instance where your Mac name created another name in your .plist preference files. You will find these in Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration.

For some files, you may need to LOCK the file after editing it.

For example, to change your Network Name when using Internet Sharing, you will need to edit and LOCK the com.apple.nat.plist file, or it will change back to the unwanted name even after you edit it. You do this by:

1) Copying the file out of this directory (say, onto the Desktop)
2) Editing the appropriate string with TextEdit, for example, editing the string listed immediately below the "NetworkName" key.
3) LOCKING it under Get Info
4) Copying it back to the source directory
5) Restarting Internet Sharing, AirPort, etc.

Hope that helps.

Posted by: HollenEstelrim at February 4, 2010 10:07 AM

HollenEstelrim, thank you so much for this post. This fix worked perfectly.

Posted by: mjs at October 10, 2010 10:33 AM

Hi Dave. I stumbled onto your site here after exhaustive searching to no avail.

I want to know if there is any way to get my Time Machine backups, (on my Time Capsule) to go back to making incremental back ups without first having to completely do a full backup from scratch. You see, I changed my network name via the Sharing Preference pane in Mac OS X 10.5.8

I have or maybe I should I say had about a 400 GB backup on my Time Machine before I renamed my network name. I don't know if Time Machine is writing over the old backups or not!

As soon as I launched Time Machine, after a lengthy 'Preparing' stage, I opened the mounted .sparsebundle to discover that ALL the folders inside had been renamed to the new Network name.

Even worse Time Machine has decided to start to do a complete back up of my 500 GB HDD from scratch! Imagine how long that will take, even connected to my MacBook Pro via ethernet cable.

Any advise would be great. Even for future use if it's too late as while I await your response Time Machine will continue to proceed.

Thanks.

Erik.

Posted by: Erikthefinn at October 11, 2010 12:31 PM

I have something to say, now that you mention it, but ...
Starbucks coffee cup I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!











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