Sometimes you’re not looking to rename an account but actually move the home directory to a separate drive or partition. Moving Your Home Folder to a Different Drive Upon restart the account name and home directory will both have been renamed to janedoe. When finished quit Terminal and System Preferences, then reboot your Mac. Since the move is “in-place” on the same hard drive the process should only take a few seconds, then a new blank command line will appear. This command moves (mv) the entire folder from the old location to the new one, which in this case is effectively just a rename operation. Type that in – the letters won’t show onscreen – then hit Return again.
You will be prompted to enter your admin account password. Make sure you type the old and new usernames correctly, then hit Return.
