This generally makes the task best reserved for advanced Mac users, although it is clearly accessible by all user accounts, assuming you have an administrator password to override the other logged in the user account. As mentioned before, it will force close all applications and processes on the target logged-in user account, which may result in accidental data loss on that user account. Since you are targeting the user account name with this method, there is no visual clue such as a profile picture to aid in identification, so make sure you choose the correct user account to target for the forced logout procedure. Enter the admin password when prompted, or else just choose “Force Quit” and continue exit Activity Monitor when done.īy force quitting the target login window process, you immediately log out that target user and kill all their applications and processes.Click (X) End Process button and verify that you want to exit the login window process for that user, acknowledging that it will log out the related user account.Select the ‘login window’ process associated with the user account you want to log out.Use the search box in the top right corner of Activity Monitor to search for “login window” – use the exact syntax.In the ‘View’ menu, choose ‘All processes’.

Launch Activity Monitor from Spotlight (Command + Spacebar) or via / Applications / Utilities /.

It works the same in all versions of OS X. This will log out any target user account in Mac OS X without having to log in again. How to Force log out user accounts on Mac without logging in If you are uncomfortable with that, just log back into that user account and log it out manually after saving files. If you’re comfortable with that, keep learning how to log out of another user account without logging in to that user account first. Like force quit elsewhere, using this to force the target user to log out will cause any open application on their account to quit and close without any storage or caching, which can result in accidental data loss because none of the open files or data would be saved.

Note that we said to log out of the other account because how this works is to force stop the target user’s login process.

Mac os switch user without logging out