Comments on: Getting the iPhone User Name

By: iPhone Developer

iPhone Developer — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:42:37 +0000

This is an Great tip John, will surely check around with it. Surely this should be a publicly accessible API if not it should be in 3.1 indeed.

By: Eoin

Eoin — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:53:30 +0000

His code is perfectly accurate. On the simulator it will return the username of the user running the simulator process. The username the iPhone uses to run apps is mobile. All code is fine.

By: Tobias Klonk

Tobias Klonk — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:29:36 +0000

Ray, your Code dosen’t work on iPhone, it just gives “mobile”. It works in the simulator as expected.

By: Ray Scott

Ray Scott — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 11:34:03 +0000

When you say User Name in your post title, I thought you meant this:

char* login = getlogin();
NSString *nsLogin = [NSString stringWithCString:login];

You’re getting the device’s hostname. You can modify that to whatever you like. It doesn’t have to have the person’s name in it. Mine, for example, is “Alien iPhone”. My code above is getting the Unix username.

Nice tip though :)

By: iphone app developer

iphone app developer — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 11:10:53 +0000

This is an awesome tip John – will play around with it. Surely this should be a publicly accessible API if not it should be in 3.0.

[Thanks to Pascal, we now know there is a publicly accessible approach :) john]

By: Pascal

Pascal — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 08:35:56 +0000

Why not just using [[UIDevice currentDevice] name] to get the name of the iPhone (since this seems to be the base of the currentHostname.

This is documented:

http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/UIKit/Reference/UIDevice_Class/Reference/UIDevice.html#//apple_ref/occ/instp/UIDevice/name

Pascal