Change your Mac Hostname via Terminal

For most people if you want to change your Mac computer name you just do it through the Sharing system preference, it’s quick and very easy. For those of us that are more geekishly inclined, we like to do things through the Terminal.

Here’s how to change your Mac hostname with the command line and make it permanent:
scutil –-set HostName new_hostname
Simply replace new_hostname with whatever you want your hostname to be changed to, for example I want to change my Mac’s hostname to MacBookPro, I will use this command:
scutil –-set HostName MacBookPro

(Note the “–” before set is two dashes next to each other, –set)

You will be asked for your admin password since you’re using the sudo command. After the command is executed you can verify that the changes took place by typing:
hostname

You can also set a temporary hostname change by using the following command:
sudo hostname new_hostname
This will reset itself after your Mac reboots though, so if you want a permanent hostname change, use the above command instead. Thank you to commenter Jim for pointing this out!

That’s all there is to it. By default Mac OS X will usually assign the hostname as whatever the admin account username is. Changing your Mac’s hostname can make it easier to find your Mac on a network and to connect to.