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I have a very precocious four-year-old who absolutely adores computers. We gave him his own login with which we control his access carefully.

The problem is the guest account. It requires no password, so regardless of the parental controls on his account, he can always log on as guest.

Applying parental controls to the guest account defeats the purpose, as I want my houseguests to be able to use it anytime they like. I would just give them the password on their arrival.

I suppose I could disable the guest account, and create a separate account which would basically be a normal user account except named "Visitor" and with a password. But I like the automatic cleanup of the guest account, and, well, that's kind of what it's there for.

But I'm still holding out hope: is there any way to add a password to the guest account?

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    "You actually can set a password for the guest account. Use sudo passwd guest from the terminal" see this answer below
    – Ricardo
    Feb 5, 2016 at 18:26

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Sorry, by design the Guest users are Guests (temporary visitors). They do not require password and you can not set one.

Your only other alternative is to set up a user account with password.

However, that could bring trouble and I would not trust the 4 years one, he/she could find how to change password and then you are locked out :)

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  • Thanks for your answer. I think I'll set up an alternative user account for my visitors, and I can write a script to clean up after them per the recommendations here: apple.stackexchange.com/questions/16825/…
    – James Cronen
    Mar 6, 2014 at 2:11
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    I don't think you can be locked out if you have an administrator account (unless the other account is also administrator), since you can always force-change the other account's password.
    – SilverWolf
    May 21, 2018 at 16:00
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You actually can set a password for the guest account.

Use sudo passwd guest from the terminal.

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  • it works on Mac OS X Yosemite.
    – Ricardo
    Feb 5, 2016 at 18:19
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    For newbies, press Cmd + Space, then type terminal. After typing the command, you will have to type your password 1st (or the administrator one) to access it. Then you'll type the new password for guest and confirm it.
    – Ricardo
    Feb 5, 2016 at 18:22

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