Unable to sign-out of iCloud on Mac OS X Mavericks

Have you recently tried to change your appleid (appleid.apple.com) and ran into problems trying to “sign-out” of iCloud or removing the iCloud Apple Mail account on Mac OS X Mavericks? I have. I searched for a month here and there trying to find a solution that worked. Nothing helped and my beast needed a fix. Finally, I scheduled a support call with the nice folks at Apple. I asked for an exception to the charge because the problem was on my 2008 Mac Pro that I bought used off of CL. Granted. So, the tech and I got to work. We went through all the easy steps but this was a very stubborn problem. The cause is still unknown, but now I know the cure.

First thoughts. – Back-up

Verify that you have a good time machine backup of your system before you get started.

Step 1. – Enable the Root admin account

First, unlock the settings pane if you have it locked. Then,

Goto Users & Groups > Login Options > Network Account Server: [Join] button. When the window pops up, click the “Open Directory Utility” button. Again, unlock the tool. Click on the menu > Edit > “Enable Root User”. I would recommend setting a strong password or take the risk and try something simple like root.

**remember to disable your root user account after you finish.**

Step 2. – Log-out of your account and Log-in as root

Step 3. – Copy the users/[your_account]/library folder to the desktop (or wherever you wish)

Just in case you decide you need something from it later.

If you can’t see the folder, try this command in terminal:

chflags nohidden ~/Library/

Step 4. – Delete the users/[your_account]/library folder (drag to trash)

A new libary folder will be generated when you log back into your account. Or, as my favorite Apple tech pointed out… just rename the library folder to libary.old or something else (besides “library”)

If you can’t see the folder, try this command in terminal:

chflags nohidden ~/Library/

Step 5. – Re-start your Mac and Log into your account

This will nuke all of your personal settings for your user account. If you use the cloud to store your data like I do then this will not present much of a problem. I spent an hour or so afterwards logging back into my various accounts and setting up browser extensions and licenses. Now the problem was fixed and I was able to login to my Apple iCloud account using my current appleid. No data loss. I did lose an app that I had recently installed. Was easy enough to download again. Finally. Whew.

Links:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1741894

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4055070