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For years, whenever I was presented with a dialog asking for Administrator authentication, the Username field was already filled in. I only needed to fill in the password.

This changed (I think) recently when I got an Apple Watch and the "unlock with Apple Watch" setting in the Security & Privacy system prefs pane got enabled. I disabled that setting, but still, since then, the Username field comes up empty and I have to fill it in every time.

Any idea of how can I go back to having a default Admin Username filled in automatically?

Some further detail and things I have tried:

  • I'm in macOS Big Sur 11.4, but as stated, the default Admin username had been there across OS versions for as long as I can remember.
  • I'm in a non-Admin account, obviously. There is only 1 Admin account in the machine, also owned by me, rarely used.
  • I tried logging in as the Admin account. In there, the authentication dialogs do fill in the Admin's name by default.
  • I have tried turning on and off Fast User switch, the showing of names in the log in screen, have recreated the TouchID fingerprints of the Admin account, and logged that account into its AppleID account. Nothing helped.
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1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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I think, if you are not logged with an Admin account, then the system asks for the Admin name and password.

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  • As stated in the question, the Admin name was filled by default for the last N years, across OS and machine migrations. So if anything for me the "normal" thing was to have it filled in.
    – hmijail
    Commented Jul 13, 2021 at 5:18
  • hmijail mourns resignees: I believe Jean_JD is correct. Whatever you had where the Admin name was filled by default was not normal. What you have now is normal. Somehow you were able to fix your Mac to work properly.
    – David Anderson
    Commented Jul 13, 2021 at 17:46
  • @DavidAnderson see another question detailing the same situation of an admin name pre-filled even if it's wrong: apple.stackexchange.com/questions/100537/… .
    – hmijail
    Commented May 19, 2022 at 11:08

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