Change OS X Computer Name
Asides
I finally figured how to change the annoying “Matthew-Mullenwegs-Computer” hostname and such: System Preferences › Sharing › Computer Name. This seems easy but since Simon didn’t know it either I thought I’d share.
Jul
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on XP or on your new Apple?
I’m pretty sure he’s referring to his new Apple. It took me a while to find it too.
Hopefully it’ll be a lot easier in Tiger when you could just search for “computer name” in System Preferences and it would tell you where to change it.
It’s the most logical spot, given the set of preferance panes. However, dare I ask what you’ve decided to name your gorgeous 12″ Powerbook?
Oh. I totally missed the heading. Ignore my previous question.
Bah – so it was right under my nose! Not sure how I missed that.
Its working name is “mmTop”. Haven’t decided if I’m going to stick with that.
Wow, sorry I didn’t catch you were looking for that, I could have given you the answer in 2 seconds! And yeah things are much easier everywhere in Tiger. I am now using it as my everyday OS at home and it is pretty snazzy. Spotlight rocks my socks off as they say.
Oh and I am serving my site and 4 others right now on that iMac running Tiger.
Thanks for posting – much faster to find you via google than to search through my own system
Thanks for the tip, you’ve been indexed, I found this tip via Google
Good lord that is an obtuse location… thanks to this post though, I now have a nicely named mac mini….
Squirt.
Thanks!
cheers for that. been searching for ages. now my macs can all have individual names
Very obscure place to put it
Thanks for the tip, I too found it through Google and as a new Mac user am very happy to have found it at last
yeah, w/out saying too much it was in the last place i’d have looked for it, too.. lol.. glad it’s done though
Sharing == Computer Name?! Nice one Apple. Nevermind I was just trying to ping an iMac, not share anything on it
I couldn’t even find the answer to this in OSX Help so thanks for the tip, haha…
thanks fer the tip. took me about 10 minutes of googling to find it…
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I’ve been struggling with this for a week or so. Thanks!
Love me some 12″ Powerbook! It’s now called: “Glacier of Thought”
Thanks!
Thanks! Googled and learned. Such an easy thing, but still so tricky
Thanks! I’ve been poking around for weeks looking for this.
Yeah. I found it by googling too, but the spotlight trick (search for “computer name”) does work to find it in Tiger.
Still useful up to today Jan 2007! Thanks!
Works in Tiger 10.4.8, just reinstalling my old PowerMac dual G4 to put it in the loft for my children to possibly use when they’re older.
It seems so obvious now.
I kept poking around the Network settings since I was seeing the computer over a network. Thanks for the tip (google got me here too:)
I spent ages looking for that, thanks
Thanks for this! Finally something that works!
Thanks for posting about this! Even two years later it’s still not that obvious.
thank you
Thx man, btw, still valid on leopard 10.5
TYVM. I’ve finally been able to rid our new system of the name of the foolish IT guy that set up whole system under his name. It’s just too bad he registered all the software under his name as well.
It’s rather insulting to have product emails forwarded to you from some noob that doesn’t use the system because they are listed as the point of contact.
Bit by bit his presence shall be eradicated. At least dream about it.
If you have trouble with your DHCP server changing your hostname on you, it can be VERY frustrating to figure out. For increased Googability, I’m posting this here.
The Leopard way to insure that your hostname doesn’t change on you is:
sudo hostname my-permanent-name; sudo scutil –set LocalHostName $(hostname); sudo scutil –set HostName $(hostname)
That should make “my-permanent-name” survive reboots and connections to corporate and hotel networks. However, you may still find the DHCP assigned name used in System Preferences>Sharing if your network has an exceptionally oppressive setup (like my company has).
@RichardBronosky: Thank you for that. My constantly changing hostname would have been simply a minor annoyance if my idiot manager hadn’t insisted we use a ruby script to set the RAILS_ENV in our rails apps. But with his insistence, this is now a major annoyance / minor roadblock as this script stops working every other day.
SO I am VERY grateful for your comment here. Your decision to post this here did, indeed, increase the Googability of this bit of knowledge.
So three cheers for you! Huzzah! And thanks again.
incredible that this *fantastic* solution to a *most annoying* problem was so hard to find. THANKS!!
I thought you could not change it… or it would involve a complicated command line procedure… I was wrong. I dont think “sharing” is the logical location to put such a setting though…
Thanks for the tip
Contrarian view: Sharing is a reasonable location for the computer name, if you consider the computer name means very little until you share it, or at least present it, on a network. What is possibly more confusing is the separate hostname (DNS) and local name (mDNS) settings. As RichardBronosky points out, the hostname (.com, .net, etc.) may change according to a corporate or ISP DHCP server with reserved names, but that will not affect your local name (.local).
very thanks for your tips….
wow i’ve loked everywhere, well, almost, computer name on the sharing in preferences… now i renamed my macbook, it had some other persons name, now i can name it whatever i like, and i decided Macbook Snow White (^_^)
yay! thanks for the help. i’ve named mine “Alpaca Manwich” since everyone’s sharing
THANK YOU!!!!!
Everyone kept on pointing me to network–advanced–wins–netbios but the change wouldn’t stick.
Heh…thanks to you, I can make my machine conform to the topology of the rest of the network. My hubby is happy, and so am I.
Thank you for the tip. I’ll try
it on my Snow Leopard computers.
One seems to change its name when
it “wakes up”. Something tells it
it already exists so it changes its
name to “hostname (3)” or
hostname (4)” etc..
Thanks a LOT!
Looks obvious, but really isn’t until you know it.
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Wow! I would have never thought to look there. Thanks for saving me the headache! My terminal prompts are now back under my control.
scutil –set HostName