{"id":34872,"date":"2022-02-01T12:01:57","date_gmt":"2022-02-01T17:01:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=34872"},"modified":"2025-10-28T09:59:46","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T13:59:46","slug":"should-you-ever-repair-permissions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2022\/02\/01\/should-you-ever-repair-permissions\/","title":{"rendered":"Should You Ever Repair Permissions?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/eclecticlight.co\/2022\/01\/27\/should-you-ever-repair-permissions\/\">Howard Oakley<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/eclecticlight.co\/2022\/01\/27\/should-you-ever-repair-permissions\/\">\n<p>One of the less-recognised benefits of SIP was that it <a href=\"https:\/\/eclecticlight.co\/2015\/11\/15\/qa-permissions-not-repairable\/\">effectively prevented this<\/a> from happening, although improvements in system installers undoubtedly played their part as well. The signed and sealed System volume in Big Sur and Monterey is an even better guarantee that everything on that volume must now be in perfect condition.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>El Capitan provided a short break from repairing permissions. Once Sierra had been released, Apple quietly posted a support note (long since removed, and not archived) recommending a new procedure, which could fix a long list of problems[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>In March 2020, Apple <a href=\"https:\/\/eclecticlight.co\/2020\/03\/28\/apple-has-changed-resetting-permissions-again\/\">changed the procedure<\/a> again, to running a new tool <code>repairHomePermissions<\/code> in Recovery mode, then reinstalling macOS. By June 2020, Apple had removed its support note, silently erasing all trace of these procedures.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>The problems that Apple originally attributed to damaged permissions on preference files often arose without any mishandling on the part of the user, nor by apps. The only explanation which fits the facts is that those problems were attributable to bugs in <code>cfprefsd<\/code> which became prominent in Sierra, and lingered for a couple of years.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>I continue to get lots of customer support requests due to messed up file permissions, ownership, and ACLs. Many of these seem to be caused by incorrect manual migrations or restorations from backup. I&rsquo;m not sure whether these could have been fixed using the Repair Home app, as I had forgotten it existed.<\/p>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/07\/zapping-the-pram-for-catalina-permissions\/\">Zapping the PRAM for Catalina Permissions<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2015\/06\/02\/fix-your-mac-with-one-weird-trick\/\">Fix Your Mac With One Weird Trick<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/15\/repairing-permissions-is-useless\/\">Repairing Permissions Is Useless<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p id=\"should-you-ever-repair-permissions-update-2022-11-30\">Update (2022-11-30): <a href=\"https:\/\/eclecticlight.co\/2022\/11\/18\/repairing-home-folder-permissions-a-mystery\/\">Howard Oakley<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/eclecticlight.co\/2022\/11\/18\/repairing-home-folder-permissions-a-mystery\/\">\n<p>The big mystery is the <code>repairHomePermissions<\/code> tool. While this is present in Ventura, it has no man page, no usage information, and proves to be a launcher for an app that doesn&rsquo;t even exist outside Recovery mode. Neither can I find an Apple Support article that mentions it any more.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p id=\"should-you-ever-repair-permissions-update-2025-10-28\">Update (<a href=\"#should-you-ever-repair-permissions-update-2025-10-28\">2025-10-28<\/a>): <a href=\"https:\/\/eclecticlight.co\/2025\/10\/27\/should-you-repair-permissions\/\">Howard Oakley<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/eclecticlight.co\/2025\/10\/27\/should-you-repair-permissions\/\">\n<p>When macOS 10.12 Sierra was released, a different problem appeared, in which permissions were apparently set incorrectly not in system files generally, but in the user&rsquo;s Home folder, specifically in ~\/Library\/Preferences. <\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Running <code>repairHomePermissions<\/code> from Terminal in Recovery launches a GUI app to repair permissions on a selected Home folder on the Data volume. However, I strongly recommend that you <em>don&rsquo;t try using this<\/em>, as you&rsquo;ll end up with the user being locked out of every folder in their Home folder. I have tried it three times in virtual machines, and each time I have had to discard that VM because of the problems it caused.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>On most occasions, a preference file can be deleted in the normal way, either in Finder or Terminal, and it won&rsquo;t return until that app is run again, as it won&rsquo;t currently be managed by <code>cfprefsd<\/code>. The alternative is to use <code>defaults<\/code>:<br>\n<code>defaults delete com.mycompany.appname<\/code><br>\ndeletes all the key-value pairs within the preference file for com.mycompany.appname, leaving just the empty property list. This has the advantage that it can be used when <code>cfprefsd<\/code> is managing that file&rsquo;s contents, so should always be reliable.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Howard Oakley: One of the less-recognised benefits of SIP was that it effectively prevented this from happening, although improvements in system installers undoubtedly played their part as well. The signed and sealed System volume in Big Sur and Monterey is an even better guarantee that everything on that volume must now be in perfect condition. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2022-02-01T17:02:00Z","apple_news_api_id":"b2b7abd9-3cff-4ef2-8804-54760d55c2c7","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2025-10-28T13:59:49Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQ==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/Asrer2Tz_TvKIBFR2DVXCxw","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[546,547,30,1199,1381,1529,2077,2223,1235],"class_list":["post-34872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-ownership","tag-permissions","tag-mac","tag-mac-os-x-10-11","tag-macos-10-12","tag-macos-10-13","tag-macos-12","tag-macos-13-ventura","tag-system-integrity-protection"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34872"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49806,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34872\/revisions\/49806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}