If two or more machines on your network have a similar name, perhaps it would make more sense to rename them as 'Office Desktop,' 'Lounge Laptop,' and 'Shirley's Workstation' instead. Therefore, you need your Mac to be quickly and easily identifiable. Similarly, if you want to send files or cast video to your computer using AirPlay (or one of the many Airplay alternatives), you'll need to know your Mac's name to send the data to the correct machine. For example, if you have shared a file with other users over your local network, they will see your computer's name on their own machines. Click that field and triple-click to select the whole name (or just delete the bits you want. Your computer's name is most commonly used for networking and sharing. Your Mac's Bluetooth name will be the same as its 'Computer Name', which is at the top of this menu. Let's take a closer look at where it is and how to change it. It's easy to do, but the necessary system setting isn't so easy to find. Thank you for your answer, I guess Im not just looking for how to change my name in the terminal, but clearly my computer is still referenced by the new-host-4 ugly name as services like Backblaze use it. The names all follow an established pattern, and yours is probably called something like 'John's MacBook Pro' or 'Mary's MacBook Air.'Īlthough you might not realize, it's possible to change that name to anything you want. When you set up your Mac for the first time, Apple automatically assigned a name to it.
