Fast user switching on a Mac: the name in the menu bar, and hiding it

Fast user switching solves a real problem: moving between two accounts on the same Mac without logging out, so nothing has to be closed and reopened. It also does something nobody asks for. The default way to reach it puts a permanent item in the menu bar, and depending on one pop-up menu, that item is a person's full name sitting at the top of every screen, every screenshot and every shared display.

Both halves are worth getting right, and they are set in the same place. Here is how to turn the feature on, what the three display options actually cost, and how to keep the switcher available without giving it prime real estate.

Turning it on

An administrator has to do this, and the location moved in a recent version of macOS. Both routes lead to the same result.

On current macOS. Open the Apple menu, choose System Settings, then click Menu Bar in the sidebar. You may need to scroll down. Then either select Fast User Switching and choose an option from the pop-up menu on the right, or click Add Controls, click Fast User Switching on the right, and choose Add to Menu Bar. Click Done.

On macOS 14 and macOS 15. The same control lives under Control Center in the sidebar instead. Go to Fast User Switching, click the pop-up menu next to Show in Menu Bar, then choose an option.

Nothing else is required. The feature depends only on there being more than one account, which is set up separately in Users & Groups.

There is a second destination for the same control, and it is the one most people should be using. Instead of Add to Menu Bar, choose Add to Control Center. On macOS 14 and 15 the equivalent is the Show in Control Center switch in the same panel. The switcher is then two clicks away inside Control Center rather than one click away in the menu bar, and it occupies no width at the top of the screen at all.

Full Name, Account Name, or Icon

The pop-up menu next to Fast User Switching offers exactly three values, and Apple describes them plainly: Full Name shows the full name of the user in the menu bar, Account Name shows the name of the user account, and Icon shows the fast user switching icon.

They are not cosmetic variants. They differ in how much of a finite strip they consume and in what they tell anyone looking at the screen.

Setting	What appears	Width used	What a bystander learns
Full Name	The name as entered when the account was created	The most, and it varies by person	A real, full personal name
Account Name	The short account name, which is also the home folder name	Middling	A username, often a company convention
Icon	A single status icon	The least, and it is fixed	Only that more than one account exists

Full Name is the most expensive of the three in the only currency the menu bar has. The app menus on the left take the space they need first, and status items live in whatever is left. A name of fifteen or twenty characters is several icons' worth of room, gone permanently, for information the owner of the Mac already knows.

Account Name is a reasonable middle choice on a machine where accounts are named something functional. It is also the name that appears in file paths under /Users, in Terminal prompts and in anything that reports which user is running, so on a work Mac it may carry a company naming pattern that is not worth broadcasting.

Icon is the setting to choose unless there is a specific reason not to. It gives up nothing operationally. The menu still lists every account by name when it is clicked. The only thing lost is an at-a-glance reminder of which account is in front, and on a Mac with two accounts that have different wallpapers, that reminder is redundant anyway.

The three ways to switch

Once the control exists, there are three routes, and the fastest one involves no clicking.

From the menu bar. Click the fast user switching menu, which sits toward the upper-right corner, then choose the user name or icon. Enter that account's password and press Return.

With Touch ID. When two or more users are already logged in at the same time, Touch ID switches between them. On a Mac or Magic Keyboard with Touch ID and no Touch Bar, press the sensor until it clicks. On a Mac with a Touch Bar, rest a finger on Touch ID until the prompt naming the target account appears in the Touch Bar, then press until it clicks. Each user enrols their own fingerprint after logging in for the first time, so this only works once both accounts have done that.

From Control Center. Click Control Center in the menu bar, click the fast user switching item, then choose the account. If the item is not there, it has not been added: go back to the settings above and choose Add to Control Center.

The Touch ID route is worth setting up deliberately. It is the one path that requires neither a menu bar item nor a typed password, which means the switcher does not need to be visible at all for switching to be quick.

What keeps running in the account you leave

The distinction between switching and logging out is the whole point of the feature, and it has consequences in both directions.

Apple's description is that fast user switching lets you switch between accounts when more than one user is logged in at the same time. Logged in, not suspended. Everything in the account left behind is still running: browser tabs, a build, a download, a video call, a render.

That is the benefit. A long task keeps working while the other account is in front, and returning to it takes a password rather than a rebuild of the entire working state.

That is also the cost, and it shows up in three ways. Memory is held by both sessions at once, which on a base-configuration Mac is the reason a second live session feels slow. Anything playing audio in the background account keeps playing. And a Mac with two live sessions will not go to sleep as readily as one with a single user signed in, which matters on a laptop running on battery.

The practical rule: switch when returning soon, log out when finished for the day. A session left logged in for a week is holding memory for nothing.

The screen you land on, and how to tune it

Switching drops you at a login prompt for the target account, which is the same screen the Mac shows at startup, and it has settings of its own that people rarely connect to fast user switching.

Those settings live in Lock Screen settings. Apple lists what can be customised there: password hints, the user list, and the Sleep, Restart and Shut Down buttons. On a Mac that gets passed between two people all day, showing the user list makes each switch one click shorter. On a Mac in a shared office, hiding the list and hiding the Sleep, Restart and Shut Down buttons is the harder-nosed choice, since a visible Restart button next to a locked session is an invitation to lose whatever was running in it.

One neighbouring setting deserves a check at the same time. Notifications settings has a "Show previews" control with three values, Always, When Unlocked and Never, and Apple notes that Always shows previews even in the login window. A Mac sitting at the switch prompt with previews set to Always will display the first line of arriving mail and messages to whoever walks past. When Unlocked confines previews to an account that is actually signed in.

Automatic login is the other setting that interacts with all of this, and it pulls in the opposite direction. It signs a chosen account in whenever the Mac starts, which is convenient and, as Apple points out, means anyone can gain access by restarting the machine. It is also switched off entirely when FileVault is on. On a Mac with two real users, leave automatic login off and let the login window ask.

Keeping the switcher without giving it menu bar space

Three levels of tidying, from free to paid.

Set it to Icon. Covered above, and it recovers most of the width immediately.

Move it to Control Center only. Add to Control Center, and do not add it to the menu bar. Nothing appears at the top of the screen, and the switcher is still two clicks away. For anyone switching accounts a few times a week rather than a few times an hour, this is the right answer and it costs nothing.

Hide it along with everything else. The menu bar problem is rarely just the switcher. Every app that wants a status icon claims width from the same strip, macOS offers no way to fold the overflow away, and the native remedies are limited: hold Command and drag an icon out of the bar to remove it, or set individual system controls to Show When Active instead of Always Show in Menu Bar settings. Command-dragging works, but getting an icon back means going into that app's own settings, which is why most people simply live with a crowded bar.

A menu bar organizer handles this differently. Items are sorted into shown, hidden and always hidden, and the hidden ones stay one click away behind a divider rather than being thrown out. Clicking a hidden item opens its own menu in place, with the bar still collapsed, which matters for something like a user switcher whose entire purpose is a menu. A named preset can also swap the whole arrangement when a particular app comes to the front, and the layout is stored separately for each display setup, so plugging in an external display does not undo the arrangement. The comparison page sets out how this class of tool differs between the options available for macOS.

When fast user switching is the wrong tool

Two cases where a different feature fits better.

Lending the Mac for ten minutes does not need a second account at all. The guest account logs in without a password, cannot change settings, and deletes everything created during the session when the guest logs out.

Handing the Mac to someone who will use it regularly needs a standard account of their own, created in Users & Groups, not a shared session reached by switching. Fast user switching is the way to move between accounts, not a substitute for having them.

What to change first

Turn Fast User Switching on, set the pop-up menu to Icon, and add it to Control Center rather than the menu bar. Enrol Touch ID in both accounts so switching needs neither a visible control nor a typed password. If the bar is still crowded after that, a tool that hides menu bar icons on a Mac is the next step, and not before.