How to correct system ownership (ACL) for full Read & Write access on iMac (2024, M4)?

How can I correct the ownership on my iMac (2024, M4) so that I have full Read & Write access?




[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: System Ownership (ACL)

iMac (M4, 2024)

Posted on Dec 3, 2025 7:39 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Dec 4, 2025 8:55 AM

KiltedTim wrote:

Full read write access to what?

macOS resides in a read only partition. You can't write to that.

Here is an Apple article with the details if the OP is interested.....the system has been on a read only volume since macOS 10.15 Catalina, and that volume has been signed & sealed since macOS 11.x Big Sur (could not find the simplified Apple article, so this one has some even deeper low level details):

Signed system volume security - Apple Support



6 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Dec 4, 2025 8:55 AM in response to KiltedTim

KiltedTim wrote:

Full read write access to what?

macOS resides in a read only partition. You can't write to that.

Here is an Apple article with the details if the OP is interested.....the system has been on a read only volume since macOS 10.15 Catalina, and that volume has been signed & sealed since macOS 11.x Big Sur (could not find the simplified Apple article, so this one has some even deeper low level details):

Signed system volume security - Apple Support



Dec 4, 2025 4:50 AM in response to Franz_32

The " Owner Account of this computer " 


Normally the " Owner Account  " is the very first Account used when the Computer was Very First Setup as New and out of the box.


Below link will provide additional insights about the Difference between Admin Accounts and Owner Accounts  


https://eclecticlight.co/2021/07/18/last-week-on-my-mac-the-perils-of-m1-ownership/


https://eclecticlight.co/2024/07/29/ownership-means-two-different-things-in-macs-how-to-tell-them-apart/

Dec 4, 2025 11:40 AM in response to Franz_32

Franz_32 wrote:

How can I correct the ownership on my iMac (2024, M4) so that I have full Read & Write access?

Can you be more specific about what files you want to have read/write access to? So far the assumptions have been that you want to modify things on the read-only boot volume. But maybe that is a wrong assumption, so if you could clarify, that would be helpful.

How to correct system ownership (ACL) for full Read & Write access on iMac (2024, M4)?

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