How can I prevent the administrator password prompts?
When deleting files, installing new applications, running AppleScript code, etc, I am prompted to enter my administrator password:
How can I set it so that everything I do is authorized to where it doesn't require a password?
Note: I'm running OS X Yosemite v10.10.5 (14F27).
Solution 1:
You can use the root user. This is highly unrecommended, but it will never show you an administrator privileges dialog.
Solution 2:
This method does work, but I'm not sufficient a nix guru to know if there could be unforeseen side effects, so a) proceed with caution & b) if anyone knows better or has useful caveats, please let us know.
You could set the permissions to group wheel
instead of admin
or staff
, then add yourself to the wheel
group if you're not already a member.
The wheel
group historically behaves like admin
or staff
but doesn't require a password if you are a member of it. It also is not an automatic addition when setting up a new admin account, it must be conferred manually.
You can test on the root level of the boot drive, as that's one place where creating or deleting a file will always ask for your password if group is set to admin or staff, rather than wheel.
Don't recklessly 'Apply to enclosed'.
I find BatChmod's GUI interface easy to understand & simpler to use than terminal.
Horizontal lines mean 'no change'. This will preserve existing ownership & Everyone perms whilst changing the group permissions in the example below.
Apply to enclosed will recursively change all the contents of your chosen folder, so use with extreme care.
to check what groups you are already in, use Terminalid myname
You should already be in admin & staff, amongst others.
If you're not already a member of wheelsudo dscl . append /Groups/wheel GroupMembership myname
which will request your password & add you to that group. Test again with id myname
This appears to require a relog before the system recognises the change.