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After installing Big Sur on two Macbook Airs I no longer have admin access to my internal drive or my Time Machine drives.
I contacted Apple support about this a few days ago and it has gone into that black hole known as "escalation".
Anybody else had this issue?
Should I forget about getting any help from Apple and just do a clean re-install?
Welcome, mbullen54, to Apple Support Communities!
What do you mean by «I only have one account but it isn't listed in the info panel for the internal drive»?
Are you saying that when you Get Info on the internal drive (“Macintosh HD”), and look at the permissions, down at the bottom of that Get Info panel, you don’t see your user account listed with any permissions for that drive?
If so, you are seeing exactly what you should be seeing!
Under both Catalina and Big Sur, the root drive (“Macintosh HD”) is locked down, and read only: not just to you, and not just by “permissions”, but at the drive level!
For Big Sur, the lockdown is even tighter on the root drive!
So. What are you trying to do, that you think you need further access to the root drive?
Welcome, mbullen54, to Apple Support Communities!
What do you mean by «I only have one account but it isn't listed in the info panel for the internal drive»?
Are you saying that when you Get Info on the internal drive (“Macintosh HD”), and look at the permissions, down at the bottom of that Get Info panel, you don’t see your user account listed with any permissions for that drive?
If so, you are seeing exactly what you should be seeing!
Under both Catalina and Big Sur, the root drive (“Macintosh HD”) is locked down, and read only: not just to you, and not just by “permissions”, but at the drive level!
For Big Sur, the lockdown is even tighter on the root drive!
So. What are you trying to do, that you think you need further access to the root drive?
I only have one account but it isn't listed in the info panel for the internal drive. When I try to make any changes to the permissions I get a message saying I don't have the necessary permissions to make changes.
Ok, you make a very good point. I am trying to create a folder but now see that I need to do that within my user folder...which I can do.
However, I also had the same issue with my TM drive which I had partitioned.....but I have resolved that by reformatting the storage partition. I can now create new foldesr and save to it.
Thanks for your help.
Interesting that two Apple Support techs couldn't solve what, in retrospect, seems like a pretty simple question.
This is not solved for me. I have my Mac account that shows me I am the admin. But no matter what password I used or changed to, it will not allow me to unlock to add additional users, update my security, NOTHING. I also cannot up date the Touch ID which no longer works. This Big Sur is awful.
Welcome, krisdr, to Apple Support Communities!
On your Mac, your account name and password need not be related to those of your Apple ID, even though you, typically, associate your Apple ID with your Mac account, for various reasons and purposes.
However, it is easy to get confused by the various dialogue boxes asking for various authentications (user names and passwords).
When simply doing work on your Mac, you will, mostly, only be asked for an Administrator account and its password.
If you log into your Administrator account, typically, then the dialogue boxes will ask for Administrator authentication, and will have your Mac username as the default Administrator account to use.
You, then, simply fill in the password with the same password you use to log into your Mac.
Don’t even think about your Apple ID, in such cases.
None of this is a change, in any way, from earlier macOSs.
Big Sur works just like the earlier macOSs, in this regard.
By the way, do you explicitly log into your Mac, each time you power-up your Mac? Or do you have your computer set to automatically log you in, since you are the only user (so long as you don’t activate any other user accounts, including not activating the Guest account)?
With setting this Auto-Login feature, it can be easy for people to forget which of their many passwords is the correct password for their Mac User account.
If this is what has happened to you, you will be unable «to add additional users, update [your] security, NOTHING», not even «up date the Touch ID».
If this is what has happened to you, you can recover your Mac User account using your Apple ID (including your Apple ID password).
Hi , no it was the a tualy Mac computer password I created. I know the difference. I did figure it out. I have a 2019 MacBook Pro and any of these models newer from 2017 has a T2 security on it. I had to reset the T2 and once I did that it all worked like it was supposed to. I posted it on a different thread on what I found. :). Thank you fir your support and info though.
Try an MSC reset https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295
Did you have more than one user account? This might be something to do with having two or more accounts and using the non admin account to log on.
Thanks, but that didn't work.
Well, mbullen54, I’m just glad I guessed correctly, and that it helped you!
Big Sur Permissions issues
