Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Lion Edition

Fast User Switching

Suppose you’re logged in, and somebody else wants to duck into her account just for a second—to check email or a calendar, for example. What are you supposed to do—log out completely, closing all your documents and quitting all your programs, just so the interloper can look something up? Then afterward, you’d have to log back in and fire up all your stuff again, praying that your inspirational muse hasn’t fled in the meantime.

Fortunately, that’s all over now. Fast User Switching works just as it does in Windows: It lets Person B log in and use the Mac for a little while. All your stuff, Person A, simply slides into the background, still open the way you had it; see Figure 13-12.

When Person B is finished working, you can bring your whole work environment back to the screen without having to reopen anything. All your windows and programs are still open, just as you left them.

To turn on this feature, open the Users & Groups panel of System Preferences (and click the , if necessary, to unlock the panel). Click Login Options, and turn on the “Show fast user switching menu as” checkbox. (You can see this option in Figure 13-10.)

The only change you notice immediately is the appearance of your own account name in the upper-right corner of the screen (Figure 13-12, top). You can change what this menu looks like by using the “Show fast user switching menu as” pop-up menu. ...