I have some locked files (probably transferred from previous iMac) which seem to block some 'spring cleaning' actions when I want to delete a block of files or a topic. How can I find them without going to each and every file in turn?
iMac 27″, macOS 13.2
Locked files on macOS will appear with a lock symbol on their file icon, though this will be difficult to discern in the Finder Window without icon view mode (⌘+1). If it is a user lock and not a System lock, then you can perform a Get Info on that locked file and deselect Locked.
Although one can use a few short lines in AppleScript to tell Finder to look in a particular folder location for locked files, the Finder is unreasonably slow in generating a list of those locked files. Finder could then work off of that found list of files and remove user locks on them.
Locked files on macOS will appear with a lock symbol on their file icon, though this will be difficult to discern in the Finder Window without icon view mode (⌘+1). If it is a user lock and not a System lock, then you can perform a Get Info on that locked file and deselect Locked.
Although one can use a few short lines in AppleScript to tell Finder to look in a particular folder location for locked files, the Finder is unreasonably slow in generating a list of those locked files. Finder could then work off of that found list of files and remove user locks on them.
Open Terminal & paste this command in & prefs enter, it’ll ask for an admin password & not echo what you type, wait for it to finish which will be an empty prompt unless it prints out some locked files, or Operation not permitted…
cd /;sudo find . -type f -flags +uchg
Specifying root (/) will take a week to run using Find and look in every folder. I recommend the following to keep it in the Users folder, and excluding the Library folder:
find $HOME -type f -flags +uchg \( ! -path "$HOME/Library/*" \) -prune
How are you doing your "spring cleaning"? With a 3rd party app? If so you should be very wary of which one as so many are akin to malware in that they can do damage to systems and apps.
how can I find my locked files
