OS X Yosemite: The Missing Manual

Sharing Across Accounts

It’s all fine to say that every account is segregated from all other accounts. It’s nice to know your stuff is safe from the prying eyes of your coworkers or family.

But what about collaboration? What if you want to give some files or folders to another account holder?

You can’t just open up someone else’s Home folder and drop it in there. Yes, every account holder has a Home folder (all in the Users folder on your hard drive). But if you try to open anybody else’s Home folder, you’ll see a tiny red icon superimposed on almost every folder inside, telling you, “Look, but don’t touch.”

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION: Shared Data Files

My wife and my 8-year-old kid share my Mac. Over the years, we’ve amassed a fabulous collection of MP3 files, but at the moment, I’m the only one who sees them in iTunes. This business of separate environments for every account holder is all well and good, but what about when we want to access the same files—like our iTunes Library?

The problem is that the iTunes Library is stored in the Music folder of just one person. Fortunately, the solution is easy enough.

Whoever is the administrator—probably your 8-year-old—should move the iTunes Music folder (currently inside somebody’s Music→iTunes folder) to the Users→Shared folder. Now it’s available to everybody.

At this point, each account holder can log in, fire up iTunes, choose iTunes→Preferences→Advanced, ...