Switch Users and Save Space With WinSwitch

Since Mac OS X 10.3 we have had Fast User Switching, the feature which allows more than one use to be logged in to their accounts on a Mac at the same time. In case you’re unfamiliar with the idea, imagine the following: you are busy writing something on your iMac and your wife comes in to the room to check her email. Instead of saving your work and logging out so she can log in to her account to check her email, you just step aside and let her log in without killing your work session. OS X gives you a neat-o cube animation as you switch users and, lickity-split, everyone gets what they need.

The process works great… the only problem is the way that you access it. Apple stuck the Fast User Switching menu into the Menu Bar and named it with the user name of the currently logged-in user. That’s no biggie if your name is Roz Ho. But if, like the unfortunate bloke in the eighth chapter of Isaiah, you have a long name (his is “Mahershalalhashbaz” and is the longest name in the Bible), then you end up wasting a ton of the space in your Menu Bar displaying your name. There has to be a better way, right? Well, of course there is.

Wincent Colaluta is a clever Mac software developer who produced a piece of software called WinSwitch, designed to solve this very problem. What it does is let you control what identifies your Fast User Switching menu. Look at the screenshots here, which I took on Steve Jobs’s Mac Pro this morning. One image shows Steve’s full user name, while the second shows his User Picture. Notice how much less horizontal space the image takes up? That, in a nutshell, is WinSwitch.

Before and After:

You get other options, too. Six in all:

• The standard Accounts logo from System Preferences
• Your User Picture
• Your short User name
• Your entire User Name (the system default)
• Your first name only
• Your initials

You get to WinSwitch’s preferences from the Menu Bar item itself and there you can choose between the six options. Additionally, you can adjust the size of the User Pictures WinSwitch displays and opt to include OS X’s powerful Root User in your list of available accounts. WinSwitch also allows you to add items to “Switch In” and “Switch Out” lists that will cause the application to launch those items when you switch to or from a particular user. (This feature could be used, for example, to make sure iTunes and iPhoto quit when switching users so that multiple accounts can access the same music and photo databases, as explained here.)

Getting your grubby hands on WinSwitch is easy. The app is a 1.5 MB download from the developer’s site and, once you expand the disk image, the installer walks you right through the process. The app is free to try and, if you like it, Wincent asks only for a donation. The app is also easy to get rid of since the well-designed installer includes an uninstall option, though I don’t think you will be getting rid of it any time soon. Like most of the apps I write about here, WinSwitch is a solid, well-designed app that does one thing, does it very well and is backed up by a responsible and responsive developer. Give it a shot; you won’t be disappointed.

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