To repair permissions on your Mac, it is not necessary to be a computer expert, much less, but we do have to be clear what is this function for and the steps we have to take to carry out this action on our Mac.
Another very important detail is to be clear about what exactly the disk permissions are in our operating system and to be clear about what to repair permissions it can be very positive for our team to carry out a repair of the permits but that is not something that is going to solve all the problems that we have or can have on our album.
How to repair permissions on Mac
Having said this, the first thing before we dive into the matter of how to repair permissions on Mac that we are going to see is the function that these permissions perform on our Mac and then their operation. This is key to be much clearer about what we can and cannot do in our team, as well as clarifying doubts about whether this action will solve a certain problem or not in our system.
This is how permissions work in macOS
Imagine that each of the elements of our Mac has a guard that controls access. In this case all documents, files, folders and other content has in itself a set of permissions that makes our Mac read, write and execute them on our machine. In addition to this, it must be clear that each of the permissions needs the owner, the group and everyone to be able to execute the action.
These permissions can be modified to our liking and each user can add a privilege rule according to the ownership level. In this way how much the team wants to execute for example a document needs permission to do soIf you do not have it, you will not be able to run it and in this way we have a more secure computer, a more limited or even restrictive use in terms of files and more controlled. Having clarified this, we go with what we have come to do, which is how we can repair permissions on our Mac
Some bugs or problems caused by permissions
The problems in the start or start of our equipment They can be solved with a permission repair and the moment we install an application or directly uninstall it on the computer, it is possible that the permissions are modified even inadvertently by the installer itself and we have to repair them.
You may also notice a Safari browser slowdown or certain programs start to generate errors at times when they didn't before.
Unexpected closings of applications, tools that do not start or even applications that do not open when clicking on them can also be caused directly by a problem in the permissions. These failures are more common on computers with older operating systems, but they can also be produced on more current equipment.
Since OS X 10.11 El Capitan Apple removed the Disk Utility application
Surely many users know this application or better said tool called Disk Utility or in Spanish Disk Utility. With it, you can directly access the disks on your computer and the option to "Repair permissions" appeared directly by clicking on a button that appeared in the top menu.
This option was eliminated directly by Apple by another one that from OS X 10.11 El Capitan onwards It was renamed First Aid. It's not really the same but the company itself said that it was not necessary to perform a disk repair due to the native improvements implemented in the system and ended up eliminating the option directly. This does not mean that you can access the function and repair the permissions from Terminal, although it will always be something more laborious to do than how we had it in previous versions.
In fact Disk Utility can verify and repair file and folder permissions but really the application what it does exactly is reset the permissions and leave them the same as before they were modified by the user or automatically.
If you have a Mac with OS X Yosemite or earlier you can do this to verify and repair permissions
In the case that you have a Mac with the version of the operating system OS X Yosemite or earlier, you can verify and repair permissions simply by following these steps that we leave you below. The first thing is to open the Disk Utility on the Mac found in Applications> Utilities. It is possible to use another method to get there and that is by selecting Go> Utilities or use Spotlight by pressing Command (⌘) - Spacebar.
Once we have it, what we have to do is select the disk on which we want to perform this check and repair of the permissions. In this case, touch select disk on the left side and click on first help. Disk Utility should display a "Permission repair complete" message when the repair process is complete.
For users with macOS higher than Yosemite using Terminal
The option offered by Apple to carry out this action is simple but it is important to say that there are Double hyphens on the command line is not a single hyphen. Once the terminal is open, we copy or write this command line to verify the disk with the double hyphens:
sudo / usr / libexec / repair_packages –verify –standard-pkgs –volume /
I may ask you for the administrator password of your Mac, Even if you don't see the cursor move when you type, write it down. Once verified the disc (be patient if you have many files and documents) it may not detect anything so better but if it detects something the warning will appear in my case:
Permissions differ on "Library / Java", should be drwxr-xr-x, they are drwxrwxr-x
User differs on "private / var / db / displaypolicyd", should be 0, user is 244.
Group differs on "private / var / db / displaypolicyd", should be 0, group is 244.
Now we have left perform disk repair if necessary by copying this line of text:
sudo / usr / libexec / repair_packages –repair –standard-pkgs –volume /
Be patient and wait for the process to finish, also bear in mind that Mac may be slower while disk verification and repair is running. If you want to check or repair the permissions of a different unit we have to specify the volume changing the "/" at the end of the text line.
Be careful with the settings in the permissions
As we say that this option can solve some problems of our Mac in some folders, documents, files, applications, etc, We can also have problems modifying the permissions or giving permissions to applications that are harmful to the equipment.
Nowadays, it is not necessary to touch too much the permissions of the apps and neither of the folders, but the option to do so is, so misadjusting these permissions can be counterproductive for the teams themselves. The system knows how to perfectly manage the users that connect as the permissions and in case of problems we can always resort to Terminal to force this repair of permissions, but we already say that it is not something essential today.
Do you have problems with user permissions or your Mac in general? Share your experiences with us and the rest of the readers to give solutions to other users who are in the same situation.