How to Create Guest Account in Windows 11

Want to lend your computer temporarily? To ensure it is secure and restricted, create a Guest account in Windows 11. Here’s how.

In Windows, you can create multiple user accounts to separate users and workflow. When you want to lend your computer temporarily to a new user, rather than share your own user account, it is better to create a guest user account in Windows. Now, sharing a computer doesn’t happen often. However, there will be situations where you have to do it. For example, I recently had to share my computer so that my family members could see and select a few vacation photos.

Creating a guest account is just two or three clicks away in older versions. However, in their infinite wisdom, Microsoft removed the ability to create a real guest account in Windows 11 & 10.

That being said, you can create a pseudo guest account and share that account while lending the computer. Sure, it is not as restricted as the real guest account, but it is still better than sharing your own user account.

To get you started, follow one of the below methods to create a new guest account in Windows 11.

Important note: The steps shown below will work in Windows 10 and 11.

Table of contents:

• Command to create a guest account
• Create a guest account from Settings in Windows 11

Command to create a guest account

You can create a new guest account in Windows with a few commands. Basically, we are creating a new user account and then moving it to the built-in Guests user group. Sounds complicated but pretty easy. Let me show you how.

1. Right-click on the Start icon on the taskbar.
2. Choose the “Terminal (admin)” option.
3. Make sure the PowerShell tab is opened.
4. Execute the “net user Guest1 /add” command.
5. Execute the “net localgroup Users Guest /delete” command.
6. Run the “net localgroup Guests Guest1 /add”
7. Close the Terminal window.
8. You are done creating the Guest account in Windows 11.

We must open the Terminal window as an administrator. So, right-click on the Start menu icon on the taskbar and choose the “Terminal (Admin)” option. After opening the Terminal window, make sure the PowerShell tab is opened. You can execute the below commands in the Command Prompt too. But, we are using PowerShell for simplicity’s sake.

In the PowerShell window, execute the below command. It will create a new user account. Replace “Guest1” with the username of your choice.

net user Guest1 /add

By default, the user account is added to the Users group. We need to move it to the Guests group. So, we need to first remove the newly created user account from the “Users” group.

net localgroup Users Guest /delete

After removing the newly created user account from the “Users” group. Execute the below command to move it to the “Guests” group.

net localgroup Guests Guest1 /add

Finally, close the terminal window.

With that, you created a new guest account in Windows 11. You can log into it from the lock screen.

To remove the user account, execute the below command in the Terminal (admin) window. If you used a different username, replace “Guest1” accordingly.

net user Guest1 /delete

Important note: You cannot use “Guest” as the username.

Create a guest account from Settings in Windows 11

You can also create a user account through the Settings app. It is pretty simple to do.

1. Launch the Settings app.
2. Go to the “Accounts > Family & other users” page.
3. Press the “Add account” button.
4. Click the “I don’t have this person’s sign-in information” link.
5. Click the “Add a user without a Microsoft account” link.
6. Type a username in the first field.
7. (Optional) set a password in the following two fields.
8. Click the “Next” button.
9. (Optional) If you set a password, you might be prompted to set security questions. Set them as needed and click “Next.”
10. With that, you create a new user account.
11. You can log into the new account from the lock screen.

Keep in mind that the user account you just created using both methods is not a real guest account. However, it gets the job done for the most part.

I hope this simple and easy Windows how-to guide helped you.

If you are stuck or need some help, comment below, and I will try to help as much as possible.