Resetting permissions in Catalina (HT203538)

Repair Permissions in Home Folder

1. Start up in Recovery mode by holding Command-R.
2. Once in Recovery mode, open Terminal from the Utilities menu.
3. There type repairHomePermissions and press Return.
4. That should launch the Repair Home app. Select the correct user account from those offered, and enter the admin password for that account. If that isn’t an admin account, Apple doesn’t explain what you should do.
5. Then click on the Next button.
6. Once that has completed, click on the Exit button.
7. In the main Recovery mode window, select Reinstall macOS, and click on Continue to reinstall macOS in its entirety.
8. Once that is complete, restart in normal mode.

If the above procedure doesn’t resolve the problems, Apple recommends:

1. Ensure you have a full backup of your Mac.
2. Start up in Recovery mode again and erase your startup disk as detailed here.
3. Reinstall macOS.
4. In the subsequent setup, create a new and different primary admin user account with a different name.
5. Use Migration Assistant to restore files from your previous account.

Apple’s detailed instructions are found here.

Also, see Repairing permissions in your Home folder has changed.

D. Hoffmann wrote:

Years of transferring my home folder from one piece of hardware to another, doing clean installs with restores from a cloned hard drive, first using the ditto command on the command line and then the Migration Assitant with later versions of the OS have likely left permissions in my home folder a mess. I just learned on an AppleCare call that since Catalina this can cause issues that are hard to detect or diagnose.

Support document HT203538 suggests a procedure for how to launch a utility that takes care of the the repair of permissions in a user’s home folder by being launched from the command line, after the computer is booted from the recovery partition. The last step in that process is a reinstall of the OS, in place of the previous installation.

My question to you guys is this: What would happen, if I left that reinstall off and just rebooted the system after the permission repair utility has completed its work?

Seems to me this would be leaving off the last step of the process if you are trying to right the ship...

It refreshes all the System code.

How to reinstall macOS from macOS Recovery - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

You have choices here— you want to leave all your user data in place and refresh the macOS on top of your existing macOS.

D. Hoffmann wrote:

The reason for my original question was that I am a little incredulous about having to do a reinstall of the OS, when the permissions fix extends to a user’s home folder, only. Shouldn’t it be sufficient to just repair those? Would I be in principle be able to do that, if the utility is installed in the main system partition by logging into a different admin user and running it there, without even having to reboot?

"incredulous" — OK, then don't. Full stop.

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Did you read this: Repairing permissions in your Home folder has changed? You don't need special permission for the Home folder because you are the owner.

Don't let that deter you. Use the method he describes for Catalina. It will work.