How to Force Log Out User Accounts on a Mac Without Logging Into Them If you’re not comfortable with that, just log back into that user account and log it out manually after saving files. If you’re comfortable with that, continue to learn how to log out another user account without having to log into that user account first. Just like force quitting elsewhere, using this to forcibly log the target user out will cause any open application on their account to quit and exit without any saving or caching, which could result in unintended data loss since none of the open files, applications, or data would be saved. Notice we said force the other account the log out, because how this actually works is to force quit the login process of the target user. Kind of a hassle, right? Another option is to force the other user account to log out, without having to log back into it on the Mac. The typical action to log out another user account in OS X is to switch to that account, log out from the Apple menu, and then returning to the desired account with another login.
There’s really nothing wrong with that, aside from reducing available resources, but sometimes you may wish to log out the other user account. This leaves the prior user account logged in while another user account session opens. For Macs who have multiple user accounts on a single computer, sometimes you may log in to multiple user accounts concurrently.
