Not able to move a file to folder I have just created and to which I have permissions

Droll_Pineapple wrote:

So this just happened. I made two screenshots and added them to a new folder I created to hold them. When I made the third screenshot I was unable to save it to that folder, this is the message I got

"Untitled" could not be moved because you don't have permission to access "xyz folder"

A screenshot by default has a name beginning with "Screenshot" followed by the date & time, so it should not be called "Untitled". If the screenshot file you are trying to copy/move has a proper name, then you likely have some sort of file system issue.

Try running Disk Utility First Aid on the hidden Container. Within Disk Utility you may need to click "View" and select "Show All Devices" before the hidden Container appears on the left pane of Disk Utility. Even if First Aid says everything is "Ok", click "Show Details" and scroll through the report to see if any unfixed errors are listed. If there are any unfixed errors listed, then run First Aid from Recovery Mode, otherwise you will need to erase the drive, reinstall macOS & restore from a backup.

If it is not a file system issue, then maybe you have some third party software installed which is interfering with the normal operation of macOS. Typical culprits are anti-virus apps, cleaning/optimizer apps, and third party security software....none of which are needed on a Mac. You can try booting into Safe Mode to see if that makes any difference in the behavior.

Are you syncing the parent folder to a cloud service which may be interfering as well?

Keith Barkley wrote:

Screenshots saved via Preview could very well be named "Untitled" since that is the default for preview.

Learn something new every day. Thanks for the information.

If that is the case, then perhaps the issue may lie with that method of making the screenshot, especially depending where that screenshot is first saved. I just assumed the main macOS snapshot capability since the OP did not specify anything specific.

Can you be more specific about your process? I am intrigued by the word “moved”. As pointed out, the name Untitled may be assigned by Preview, but then I’d expect the file to be saved, so how does “move” come into play?

Q1: are your screenshots set to open in Preview?

Q2: are you saving them somewhere and then moving to the designated folder using the Finder? If not, please describe step by step.

A few observations/suggestions:

1) you seem to have set the screenshots to be put in the Clipboard, and then you use New from Clipboard to edit the file in Preview. You can make this more streamlined by selecting Preview as the destination: Command-Shift-5, Options->Save to: Preview

This way when you press Command-Shift-4 your screenshot opens in Preview immediately

2) There is no need to Save in iCloud first and then move the file. Just select the desired location when saving; the next time you save it will be already in yhat location by default.

See the highlighted item on the left pane of Disk Utility in this screenshot:

Where did you create the new folder? Do you have plenty of available disk space?

Screenshots saved via Preview could very well be named "Untitled" since that is the default for preview.

'Untitled' is the default name when you save the screenshot image, so they saved it *somewhere*.