I’m trying to download macOS Monterey and it says I need administrator password to do this
MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 11.7
The administrator password is typically the same password used to login to your Mac.
Have you forgotten your login password?
This is Apple’s guidance for resetting your login password:
yet another way to say the same thing:
If you are the FIRST or ONLY user, you are an Admin.
Your Mac user login password (NOT APPLE-ID anything) is the password required.
Generally, if you are an Admin, the Username field will be pre-populated with YOUR user-id, and otherwise you need to supply the Admin user-id as well.
An Administrator account is any local account that has Administrator privileges. Since you should have at least one of those on hand, the first user account normally gets those when you set up a new Mac. If you add more accounts, you can decide which have them, and say, e.g., that a secondary account for a child does not have that privilege.
Exercising the privilege is something that you do temporarily after authenticating, e.g. by entering your password. This is a security precaution, inherited from UNIX, that keeps malware from being able to easily, silently run with superuser (root) privileges behind your back.
I believe that Windows once let its Admin users run with full privileges all of the time, which meant that if users encountered malware, the malware had those privileges automatically, too. Windows malware, back in those days, could anttack any part of the Windows system without being forced to pop up a password request that might tip its hand.
You don't need an administrator password to download the installer file, therefore something else is going on here.
Specifically, when are you being asked for the password? Maybe you've already downloaded the Monterey installer and you're trying to run it? that's a different question (although points to the same issue of what is your administrator password)
Did you check in Settings/Users & Groups, if you are logged in as an administrator?
If yes, your Account log in password should work.
The only other password you might need is the Apple Account password if you use the AppStore on your Mac to download the macOS software.
Where do I find my administrator password for MacBook?
