Apple introduced fast user switching years ago to allow easier shared use of a single Mac by multiple people. After logging into an account and switching away from it, all the activities that were underway continue on their merry progress even while another user has logged in or switched to the foreground.
This includes iCloud Drive, Dropbox, and other sync apps that carry out their operations in the background during a normal session. This can be useful if multiple people rely on synchronized files, preventing them from having to log in and wait for updates to occur.
Apple assures its third-party developers in fast user switching documentation that background accounts have no keyboard or mouse input, and apps that check on screen activity will receive a response as if the screen were asleep. That is a sort of guarantee that any app or service that’s running will reliably keep running.
If you’re wondering if it’s working in practice, there’s a way you can peep on switched accounts without changing the user on that Mac. If Screen Sharing is enabled for the account and you make a remote connection from another Mac using that switched-away account, you’ll be able to create a virtual session and interact with that account even as another user is working in the foreground. This can slow things down—sometimes substantially—for that user, however, as the background account has to generate all the display information just as if it’s working with a monitor.
This Mac 911 article is in response to a question submitted by Macworld reader Akhilesh.
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Author: Glenn Fleishman, Senior Contributor
Glenn Fleishman’s most recent books include Take Control of iOS and iPadOS Privacy and Security, Take Control of Calendar and Reminders, and Take Control of Securing Your Mac. In his spare time, he writes about printing and type history. He’s a senior contributor to Macworld, where he writes Mac 911.