macOS Basic LAPS admin account not createdSolved

Hello @aitana ,

Yes, macOS 26 is fully supported for Hexnode Basic LAPS and local admin management.

If the policy appears successful but the admin account is missing, check the device’s Action History in the Hexnode UEM portal for the exact LAPS status. A common cause is an account-name conflict. If the action history displays an error like:

“LAPS failed to create admin account as it already exists on the device”

then the Hexnode agent or macOS directory services may be detecting a previous reference to that short name, even if it is not visible in the standard user list.

To verify this, run these two checks in the Mac terminal:

dscl . -read /Users/<short_name>
ls /Users

If dscl returns DS Error: -14136 (eDSRecordNotFound) and there is no matching home folder under /Users, the account may not actually exist anymore, but the LAPS deployment can still be blocked by a stale cached reference from an earlier setup attempt.

I checked this. dscl . -read /Users/<short_name> returns DS Error: -14136 (eDSRecordNotFound), and “ls /Users” only shows the existing user folders. The LAPS admin account definitely isn’t visible anywhere, but Hexnode still says it already exists.

That result matches a stale state conflict rather than a real macOS user account conflict.

To resolve this, edit your Basic LAPS policy and change the Account Name to a completely new, unique value. Save the policy and redeploy it. By using a fresh short name, you will bypass the false-positive conflict, and Basic LAPS will create the local admin account successfully.

Regards,
Simon Scott
Hexnode UEM

Changing the Account Name worked. The admin account was created after redeploying the policy.