Windows 11 is fixing my biggest complaint with user accounts
The move from local-only user accounts in Windows to Microsoft accounts hasn’t been great for many reasons, and one of them is that your home folder always have the same name as your email address. Now that is finally changing.
Microsoft today released Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.8062 to the Beta channel for Windows Insiders, alongside build 26300.8068 to the Dev channel. Both updates include a new change to the Windows setup process: you can set a name for your PC and the name of your user home folder.
When Microsoft Accounts were introduced as the primary method of setting up a new PC account, Windows would set the name of your home folder to the name of your account. So if you had a long or embarrassing Hotmail/Outlook email address, that would become the name of your home folder with no (easy) way to change it. If you used one of the workarounds to create a local account only in Windows 10 and Windows 11, you can still choose your home folder name.
The home folder name has always been the main reason I’ve stuck to creating local accounts only on newer PCs: my Microsoft account has my full first and last name, and it’s annoying to enter scripts and configuration files. It’s always been easy to change the PC name, so the update isn’t as monumental, but I also appreciate that this setting is included in the setup process.
Microsoft said in a blog post: “Expanding on our work that began releasing to Insiders last fall, you can now choose a custom name for your user folder on the Device Name page when setting up Windows. This most recent update now makes it easier to choose a custom name. The naming option is available only during installation. If you skip this step, Windows will use the default folder name and continue installation as usual.”
There are still a few reasons to create a local-only account in Windows, especially if you don’t plan to use OneDrive or other Microsoft services. The option for local accounts should definitely still exist, and not be hidden behind command prompt workarounds or custom configuration scripts, but at least there’s no need to choose your home folder name.
It’s unclear when these changes will roll out to the stable version of Windows 11. They’ll likely stay in Insider channels for a few weeks or months while the bugs are ironed out, before moving to all Windows 11 PCs.
Source: Windows Insider blog (1, 2)
