How to Fix Your Permissions in Mac OS X

Use Apple's Disk Utility to repair your Mac OS X permissions.

You don’t have to spend a lot of time performing maintenance duties on your Mac, thanks to the modern UNIX underpinnings of OS X. Still, one maintenance duty that it's a good idea to perform at least once a month is fixing the permissions on your Mac.

Difficulty:

Easy

Instructions

1. In a Finder window, select “Applications,” then “Utilities,” and double-click on “Disk Utility.”

2. 

   This will launch Disk Utility and allow you to perform a number of disk-oriented tasks, including updating and repairing your permissions.

3. 

   In the Disk Utility window, select the hard drive icon in the left pane and then select “First Aid.” It’s the first button at the top of the Disc Utility window.

4. 

   Once you have selected “First Aid,” click the “Repair Permissions” button (on the lower left side) and let the application run; it should take about 10 to 15 minutes.

Tips & Warnings

• Repair your permissions at least once a month.

• If you are installing a lot of new software, repairing your permissions should be performed more often.

• Repairing permissions will often "fix" a lot of common issues on Mac OS X.

• The freeware application Onyx is a useful tool for repairing your permissions and performing other Mac OS X maintenance tasks.

Resources

• Onyx maintenance tool