How to Login automatically, without entering my password

Take a look in System Preferences/Accounts, and click on 'Login Options' at the bottom of the little side panel on the left. One of the options that will appear is 'Automatic login' – just select your user account from the pop up menu and you should be set to automatically log into your account whenever you start your Mac up in the future.

hi all,

i'm bumping this thread because i have a related question:

my computer has 2 users, so we want to disable automatic login. however, we don't want to have to use our passwords to login each time. how can i disable automatic login while also enabling password-free login?

jakeopolis said:

hi all,

i'm bumping this thread because i have a related question:

my computer has 2 users, so we want to disable automatic login. however, we don't want to have to use our passwords to login each time. how can i disable automatic login while also enabling password-free login?

Click to expand...

You can remove the passwords for each user. CLick change password and leave the new one blank. Not a recommended thing to so.

rdowns said:

You can remove the passwords for each user. CLick change password and leave the new one blank. Not a recommended thing to so.

Click to expand...

yeah that seems pretty unsafe. is there no way to maintain an admin password but not require a password at login?

jakeopolis said:

yeah that seems pretty unsafe. is there no way to maintain an admin password but not require a password at login?

Click to expand...

Further to this, I just wanted to know what threat this would open the computer up to if no account had a password? Would it be under threat from external sources over the internet, or if someone managed to get on our wifi network? Or would it just be unsecure to someone physcially sitting in front of the computer?

What we want to do is set up 4 user accounts for each person in the household but not bother with having to enter our password every time we want to login to our space on the computer. Our old family computer was a PC running Windows XP and this scenario was working quite well. Any tips?

cycleswithin said:

Further to this, I just wanted to know what threat this would open the computer up to if no account had a password? Would it be under threat from external sources over the internet, or if someone managed to get on our wifi network? Or would it just be unsecure to someone physcially sitting in front of the computer?

Click to expand...

You would be open to many threats, including external ones and from others on your network. Always setup a password on accounts.

I did as instructed and I can now login automatically without entering my password. Thank you.

lorradan said:

I did as instructed and I can now login automatically without entering my password. Thank you.

Click to expand...

Normally, when I set up a Mac without a password, I make that user a "standard" user and create an Admin user with a password. This is a multi step process.

1. Create a new user
2. Make the new user an admin user
3. log in as the new user
4. make the previous user a "standard" non-admin user
5. remove the non-admin user's password
6. in system preferences, make the "standard" user "auto login"

This prevents somebody from walking up and making admin changes without a password but my "standard" user can work "all day" without bothering with a password.