If you’re a Mac user, you know that changing your computer’s name is a simple process. But if you’re not sure how to do it, or if you just want to change your computer’s name for some other reason, we’ve got the answer for you. To change your computer’s name on Mac OS X, open System Preferences and click on the General tab. Under the “Computer Name” section, select a new name for your machine. You can choose any name that you like, but be sure to use a unique one that will be remembered by other users of your machine. If you want to keep your old computer’s name after changing your machine’s name, open System Preferences and click on the Users & Groups tab and add the new user who will be taking over for the old user under “Computer Name.”
When you’re sharing stuff back and forth between your computers, the names of those computers actually start to matter — in my case, I upgraded to a new MacBook Air because my old one has a dead screen and is out of warranty, so I made it into a desktop with an external monitor. That’s when I got an error that my two Macs had the same name. Oops! Luckily it’s an extremely easy fix.
Just open up System Preferences, go to Sharing, and change the computer name. Done!
You can also change it from the Terminal using this command, though obviously it’s much simpler to just change it under Sharing.
