Summary
If you have company visiting you in your home, they might want to borrow your computer. However, you probably don’t want to give your guests full access to your computer. Here is how you can set up an account for your guests.
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If you have friends over and you let them use your computer, or if you loan your laptop to someone else for a time, you probably don’t want to let them use your account. Here’s how you can set up a special account for people who may occasionally need to use your computer.
For Personal Tech Media, this is Two Minute Tech. I’m Jim Herman.
Before Windows 10, a special guest account feature made it very easy to set up a separate account on your computer. Unfortunately, Windows 10 hid the guest account. Although the account name, guest, is still reserved by Windows, you can create a separate user account for visitors on your computer.
To create an account for your guests, open the Settings app in Windows. Go to Accounts, then Family and Other Users. Microsoft will make its strongest case for why you need to use your email address to sign in using a Microsoft account. However, at this point, choose the I don’t have this person’s sign in information option instead.
Then, select Add a user without a Microsoft account. Finally, name the account and leave the password blank. A blank password will allow anyone to sign into the account. However, as I mentioned earlier, the name guest is still a reserved account name, so you’ll have to choose something else like Visitors instead.
Ensure that you create this account as a standard user. A standard user won’t be able to change settings or install programs without your permission. Your guest probably wouldn’t do anything on purpose, but using a standard user account will stop accidental changes or mistakes that could make your computer vulnerable.