Step 2: Select your disk in the lefthand column. How to repair disk permissions with Disk Utility You can repair broken permissions by following the steps outlined in the next section. Should Disk Utility find any incorrect permissions, you’ll see a list of messages about what’s incorrect. Tip: Depending on the size of the chosen disk, the process might take a while so be patient.
Disk Utility should display a “Permissions verification complete” message when the repair process is finished. Step 4: Now hit the Verify Disk Permissions button. If necessary, click the disclosure triangle to the left of the disk icon to display the names of your volumes and partitions. Step 2: Select the disk you wish to verify permissions for in the lefthand column which lists all of your detected volumes and disks. Alternatively, choose Go > Utilities or use Spotlight by hitting Command (⌘) – Spacebar to locate it. You can find it in your Applications/Utilities folder. How to verify disk permissions with Disk Utility In turn, any inadvertently altered permissions can be reverted back to their default state in case of failure. This allows the operating system to run through the files on your disk and compare their permissions with its original master list of permissions. macOS keeps a master list of what the permissions for each file should be. Understanding disk permissions in macOSĮvery file and folder on your Mac’s disk has an associated set of permissions that determines who can read, write to or execute it.
In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to verify and fix disk permissions in macOS, which is typically a basic troubleshooting step to fix any software issues your Mac might be plagued with. It is therefore essential that disk permission in macOS are as they are supposed to be. In fact, the very act of installing and uninstalling apps on your Mac can over time result in broken permissions.Īnd when file permissions break, your apps might be allowed to alter each other’s files or even modify read-only system files, which in turn can lead to various permission errors and erroneous behavior in macOS. Unfortunately, it’s quite easy to unintentionally mess up disk permissions. Disk permissions allow your Mac to control what users have access to files and folders on your Mac. Thanks to Tetsujin for making this excellent suggestion.Some Mac hiccups and startup issues can be resolved by repairing disk permissions in macOS. Maybe this helps anyone with similar issues. I had this problem with macOS 10.13.6 High Sierra. It takes a moment to run, but apparently this radically clears up local backups. No administrator privileges are necessary. Either way, the magic command looks like this: tmutil thinlocalsnapshots / 1000000000000 1 I do recall that my MacBook has been telling me that no backups could be made for some time. Apparently this weirdness is caused by local Time Machine backups that have not been relayed to an external disk. Thankfully I found this StackExchange thread discussing the same issue. But sadly it only confirmed what the df command saw: my disk was nearly full, and whatever 250GB I had deleted were somehow still lurking around. I thought perhaps Disk Utility would bring clarification, perhaps via a First Aid run. I double-checked on the command line with df -h, and the output corroborated the statement of the application I wanted to install: 98% disk space used.
Sure enough, I finally had space again.īut when I tried to install something, which instantly told me I only had 14GB available, and that’s just not enough. I freed up about 250GB of files, emptied the trash, and checked under About this Mac – Storage. I had a weird issue on y MacBook today: after being low on space for what felt like months, I bit the bullet and deleted 50% of stuff from hard disk.