I cannot save any files to my Home folders anymore, apparently after upgrading to macOS Big Sur on my iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015)

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I cannot save any files to my Home folders anymore, apparently after upgrading to macOS Big Sur on my iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015)

I have searched the web for what to do, and there is not much out there.

There is a recommendation to just reinstall the entire macOS from Recovery Mode, which seems a bit drastic.

Less drastic ways to reset the file permissions of my Home subfolders apparently have been removed in the most recent macOS releases, according to some web sites.

I would like to know what Apple recommends to do when I cannot save any files anymore, from any app, even just testing with a new document in TextEdit trying to Save to my Home Documents folder, I get the error:

"The document "filename" could not be saved as "saved filename". You don't have permission.

I am logged in as my default user account, the one I always have used for many years on this iMac. That user account has admin privileges.

When I Go to my Home, and do File Get Info, and then look at the Sharing & Permissions, my account says I have Privilege Read & Write.

iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Feb 6, 2021 6:56 PM

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Answer 1

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Dad123456 Author

Level 1

12 points

Feb 7, 2021 11:07 AM in response to Barney-15E

Hi Barney-15E,

I gave it a try, and ran:

diskutil resetUserPermissions / `id -u`

It ran, took a few minutes, the output was:

Ready to reset user permissions on disk2s5 (Macintosh HD)

Started verify/repair permissions on disk2s5 (Macintosh HD)

User permissions have been reset

Finished verify/repair permissions on disk2s5 (Macintosh HD)

I went and created a text file in TextEdit, and attempted to save it to my user Documents subfolder. I was able to Save! No error message in TextEdit like before, saying I do not have permission. So thank you!

FYI, when I go and look at the Sharing & Permissions of my Documents folder, via Get Info, it still says "You have custom access". I do not know when that custom ACL was put upon my Documents folder, I know I did not ever do that explicitly. It probably was when my macOS upgraded to Big Sur, and the migration and conversion to this latest OS did that, I would guess.

Anyways, for now, it seems I can save files to all the subfolders I used to save files to for many years, and it looks like I may have now survived this upgrade to Big Sur.

I truly appreciate you helping us Mac users, that is a nice thing you are doing for society. Letting us getting back to using our computers - helping us fix them when Apple causes issues with their software updates and OS updates.

Thanks Again!

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Answer 2

Barney-15E

Level 10

116,626 points

Feb 6, 2021 7:15 PM in response to Dad123456

I would like to know what Apple recommends

You'd have to ask Apple. None of us can speak for them, and I can't find any Apple articles relating to resetting permissions anymore.

You can try

diskutil resetUserPermissions / `id -u`

However, are you certain your permissions are the problem?

Can you open the home folder?

What else does it say in Sharing & Permissions specifically for the folder you are trying to write into?

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Answer 3

Dad123456 Author

Level 1

12 points

Feb 6, 2021 11:07 PM in response to Barney-15E

Thanks for the reply.

I am not 100% sure what the problem is, but it seems like permissions.

I can open up my Home folder in Finder. I can create a new test subfolder in my Home folder. I can save a newly created file in that newly created subfolder.

Did some more testing. I can create a test TextEdit file and save it to some other already existing sub-folders in my user folder. I looked at the Sharing & Permissions on those subfolders I can save to, and they say my user can Read&Write, "wheel" can Ready only, "everyone" can Read only. So that is the normal default setting for permissions on a folder I think, and I can write to those subfolders.

The strange thing is that if I do a Get Info on the Documents subfolder under my user folder, Sharing & Permissions does not show a list of my user, wheel, and everyone and their permissions, it only shows "You have custom access"

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Answer 4

Barney-15E

Level 10

116,626 points

Feb 7, 2021 4:09 AM in response to Dad123456

Custom access means it has an Access Control List (ACL) attached. I imagine it is the ACL that is the problem.

For normal permissions, the group should be Staff, not wheel. But the group should only be set for the home folder, Public, Sites, and sub folders you create. For folders you create, you should remove the group.

I don’t know if this will remove the problem ACL, but copy/paste this into Terminal and hit return.

diskutil resetUserPermissions / `id -u`

Apple doesn’t have that posted anymore, and for a brief period suggested reinstalling the OS after. I have run the command on Big Sur and it repaired permissions I had changed to test it.

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I cannot save any files to my Home folders anymore, apparently after upgrading to macOS Big Sur on my iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015)

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