After a repair a few months ago I realized that I am now listed as a standard user. No one is listed as system administrator and I cannot make any changes to my MacBook because of this. How do I find or change the system administrator username and password?
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
The "System Administrator" is an alias for root, but the root account isn't enabled. Essentially, there is no such thing.
Unfortunately, there is no way to recover from this without erasing the drive and reinstalling macOS.
How to reinstall macOS - Apple Support
Make sure you have a backup and you can migrate from that when you reinstall macOS.
You may find instructions to remove a file named, "AppleSetupDone." Apple did away with that in Sonoma.
The "System Administrator" is an alias for root, but the root account isn't enabled. Essentially, there is no such thing.
Unfortunately, there is no way to recover from this without erasing the drive and reinstalling macOS.
How to reinstall macOS - Apple Support
Make sure you have a backup and you can migrate from that when you reinstall macOS.
You may find instructions to remove a file named, "AppleSetupDone." Apple did away with that in Sonoma.
goldie22 wrote:
Why would Apple have Sonoma make this impossible? It seems the issue is a common one.
Because it is actually a security issue. A person with physical access to your Mac should not be able to create an admin user account without knowing a valid admin macOS user name & password.
This is just another reason why backups are so important these days. There are so many new ways to permanently lose access to data on the internal SSD with the newer Macs due to all the new hardware, software, and security changes.
Why would Apple have Sonoma make this impossible? It seems the issue is a common one.
It is kind of strange that the Sonoma upgrade has caused loss of admin status, and disabled the easy way to fix it in the same upgrade.
How to locate the system administrator username on MacBook
