Permanently Modify Mac OS X Guest Account in OS X Catalina?

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Permanently Modify Mac OS X Guest Account in OS X Catalina?

Hello everyone

We have iMac running OS X Catalina at the school where I teach. We uses the guest login for our students in order that the login is always clean, but we would like to permanently modify that guest login (dock, wallpaper, first runs etc). The guest account has been permanently modified on our old system running Majave, but the same method will not work in Catalina.

Any help how this can be done with OS X Catalina? Thanks in advance for help or links!

Yoko

Posted on Sep 7, 2021 2:38 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

HWTech

Level 9

59,990 points

Oct 7, 2021 8:12 AM in response to yuching75

Beginning with macOS 10.15 Catalina the macOS system volume is now a separate read-only APFS volume so it is impossible to make modifications to those system files unless macOS provides links to the writable volume for a particular folder such as the "/etc" folder. Keep in mind that Apple is locking things down more & more with each new version of macOS so the situation will only get more difficult & complicated.

About the read-only system volume in macOS Catalina - Apple Support

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Answer 2

yuching75 Author

Level 1

4 points

Sep 22, 2021 2:52 AM in response to a brody

Thank you very much information you provide, but this function may not be suitable for my school.

What we need is a function that combines general users and guest users.

Except for the feature that all files will be deleted when guest users log out or restart, everything else is the same as general users.

In the past, I set the desktop of the guest user and then switched to the administrator to lock it using the terminal, but now it seems that I can no longer do this.

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Answer 3

a brody

Level 10

83,929 points

Sep 23, 2021 11:36 AM in response to yuching75

This could be a function available to JAMF users. JAMF is a mobile device management software tool for Macs that many schools and corporate users use to establish specific restrictions to mobile and other types of accounts.

You can even set a temporary admin that can be accessible to specific accounts and users.

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Answer 4

yuching75 Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 4, 2021 11:49 PM in response to a brody

In Mac OSX Mojave, I can set the desktop of the guest user and then switched to the administrator to lock it using the terminal:

sudo cp -r /Users/Guest/ /System/Library/User\ Template/zh-Hant.lproj/

However, I can no longer use this command to lock the Guest in OS X Catalina.

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Answer 5

celliott147

Level 6

12,200 points

Oct 7, 2021 6:55 AM in response to yuching75

You could do this by binding the devices to Active Directory and storing the user home folder on a server within the school. This is typically how lab environments such as the one you seek are set up.

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Answer 6

a brody

Level 10

83,929 points

Sep 7, 2021 6:50 AM in response to yuching75

The best way is probably to create a parental control account with the access you desire using ScreenTime:

https://beebom.com/set-up-parental-control-mac-macos-catalina/

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Answer 7

a brody

Level 10

83,929 points

Oct 6, 2021 4:21 PM in response to yuching75

I believe the chmod or chflags command might be better. I'm going to ask this be redirected to the Technologies forum, where more people are familiar with how Mac OS X responds to the command line.

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Permanently Modify Mac OS X Guest Account in OS X Catalina?

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