How to reset user permissions ?

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Level 1

99 points

How to reset user permissions ?

The permissions on around 60% of files in my Home folder have been broken. In some folders, I can't rename, edit or move any files without providing admin credentials. Luckily, none of the files in my documents folder have been affected.

I have checked the permissions on affected folders and found a lot of strange entries that disappear when I edit permissions in the "Get Info" dialog. But, no matter what I do in the "Sharing & Permissions" panel, I still cannot change files in those locations – manually editing permissions on individual files does not work. The "everyone" entry is shown twice once with "custom" permission and once with "read only". When I change the "custom" to "Read & Write" my permission shown in the dialog changes from "custom" to "Read & Write" ! It's as if macOS treats my user account as an "everyone" account instead of the account that is logged in.

The usual method of reseting permissions is to choose "Apply to enclosed items..." on the enclosing folder. However, that does not change any permissions on the files and folders inside in the affected folders.

This only affects one user account on my Mac. The other accounts including the admin account are fine.

It really looks like there are hidden permissions that are not affected by changes in the "Sharing & Permissions" panel. Those hidden permissions survive the file being copied across user accounts including when that is done while logged into an admin account. They also survive being copied or moved to another user account via the "Sharing" user account and via an external drive.

Probably related to my problem is that the Box app bangs errors on every login and will not run.

Is there a way to successfully reset all permissions in the Home folder ?

Thanks.

Mac Studio

Posted on Apr 16, 2025 9:26 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Encryptor5000

Level 5

7,662 points

Apr 18, 2025 7:20 AM in response to MrHoffman

Late to the thread, but resetting home folder permissions hasn't disappeared entirely. There's a hidden Disk Utility command in Terminal that accomplishes this.

Usage:  diskutil resetUserPermissions MountPoint|DiskIdentifier|DeviceNode UID
Reset the permissions of a user home directory.
This command must be run as root.

The UID would be the numeric identifier of the user whose home permissions should be reset, and in most cases, the mountpoint would be the booted macOS installation ('/'). You can get the account UID in System Settings/Preferences by completing the first four steps of "Rename the account" here: Change the name of your macOS user account and home folder - Apple Support

Example command to reset home folder permissions of the first user account on the booted system:

sudo diskutil resetuserpermissions / 501

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Answer 2

Apr 18, 2025 6:40 AM in response to Garry Brooke

Garry Brooke wrote:

UPDATE 2: MacDataSaviour was correct in advising on resetting ACL permissions. However, I could not find that facility on my Mac running macOS 15.4. However, I did find the excellent Tinkertool System utility. TS has a function which resets all ACL permissions for a given Home folder to default values. I ran that function and found around 93% of files in my Home folder needed to be reset.

TS has a great many more useful routines and has helpful and relevant help info on each. it was recommended by Howard Noakley on his excellent web site: The Eclectic Light Company.

I would be cautious about those tools, as they can introduce issues, concerns, and support costs.

You will want to report any issues you encounter to and request protection-related support from Electic Light and Oakley, as well.

This as you're now in uncharted configuration territory.

Usual means to reset a clobbered home is an erase and install, and migrating data. Archiving and re-loading the home will probably work too, but I’ve not tried that path.

As mentioned above, the old Apple reset-user-permissions tooling was around and more recently all disappeared, and I have to assume that disappearance was for reasons.

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Answer 3

Garry Brooke Author

Level 1

99 points

Apr 17, 2025 9:07 PM in response to Garry Brooke

UPDATE 2: MacDataSaviour was correct in advising on resetting ACL permissions. However, I could not find that facility on my Mac running macOS 15.4. However, I did find the excellent Tinkertool System utility. TS has a function which resets all ACL permissions for a given Home folder to default values. I ran that function and found around 93% of files in my Home folder needed to be reset.

TS has a great many more useful routines and has helpful and relevant help info on each. it was recommended by Howard Noakley on his excellent web site: The Eclectic Light Company.

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Answer 4

Garry Brooke Author

Level 1

99 points

Apr 18, 2025 4:53 PM in response to Garry Brooke

UPDATE 2: MacDataSaviour was correct in advising on resetting ACL permissions. I could not find that facility on my Mac running macOS 15.4. However, I did find the excellent Tinkertool System utility. TS has a function which resets all ACL permissions for a given Home folder to default values. I ran that function and found around 93% of files in my Home folder needed to be reset.

TS has a great many more useful routines and has helpful and relevant help info on each. It was recommended by Howard Oakley on his excellent web site: The Eclectic Light Company.

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Answer 5

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,144 points

Apr 18, 2025 4:50 AM in response to Garry Brooke

It sounds like you used “apply to enclosed” on one of the primary folders inside your home. Each one of those has an ACL, “group: everyone deny delete“

quite a few years ago, there was a “RepairUserPermissions“ utility with instructions on how to reset your home folder permissions, but that was quickly disappeared by Apple for some reason.

There is a way to delete all of the ACL entries using terminal, but I’m not at my Mac to figure out either of those two commands. Maybe sometime this afternoon.

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Answer 6

Garry Brooke Author

Level 1

99 points

Apr 17, 2025 5:44 PM in response to Garry Brooke

UPDATE: Sorry, MacDataSaviour but, "resetpassword" utility in Recovery looks different in macOS 15. Even the Apple support article is wrong. The process I see is:

boot into Recovery;
open Terminal and type "resetpassword".
choose admin account and provide admin password – click on Next;
choose user account – click on Next;
type new password, verify password and password hint – click on Next.

I've not completed that. Do I have to reset my password in order to see the option to Reset Home folder permissions... " ?

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Answer 7

Garry Brooke Author

Level 1

99 points

Apr 17, 2025 6:02 PM in response to Garry Brooke

By the way, the faulty permissions survive being copied or moved across user accounts directly, via "Shared" and via external volumes. So far, the only way I've found is to manually fix permissions on every file and folder which seems ridiculous.

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Answer 8

Garry Brooke Author

Level 1

99 points

Apr 18, 2025 4:58 PM in response to Encryptor5000

Encryptor5000, many thanks. I didn't see your post before using Tinkertool System which seems to have fixed all my issues. Does the diskutil command fix ACLs ? [I can't find mention in the man page].

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Answer 9

Apr 23, 2025 6:50 AM in response to Garry Brooke

Yep, it should reset ACLs for everything in your home folder. It’s not documented in the diskutil man page.

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