How do I hide a particular user from the login screen?

Question

How do I hide a particular user from the login screen on a default install of 11.10 and higher? (ie. using LightDM)?

Answer 1

At that moment this method is not working because of a small bug in lightdm, it should be fixed soon. Please check the bug status before applying this method.

---

Heres what you want to do:

First, make a backup of your config.

sudo cp /etc/lightdm/users.conf /etc/lightdm/users.conf.bak

Then, you need to edit your config:

sudo nano /etc/lightdm/users.conf

You'll see something like this:

#
# User accounts configuration
#
# NOTE: If you have AccountsService installed on your system, then LightDM will
# use this instead and these settings will be ignored
#
# minimum-uid = Minimum UID required to be shown in greeter
# hidden-users = Users that are not shown to the user
# hidden-shells = Shells that indicate a user cannot login
#
[UserAccounts]
minimum-uid=500
hidden-users=nobody nobody4 noaccess
hidden-shells=/bin/false /usr/sbin/nologin

Of interest to us is the part here:

hidden-users=nobody nobody4 noaccess

To hide the username james, just add it like this:

hidden-users=nobody nobody4 noaccess james

Then, reboot your computer and it should be gone.

As a reference to others, see

See https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/accountsservice/+bug/857651