Finder keeps asking my for my password every time i want to move or delete files, How do i remove this?

Apple Support solved this for me. I'm a Mac novice so I may not say this in "mac-eese".

The first sequence of steps took about 5 or so minutes and it did nothing (that I know of), but follow along anyway - it's just a handful of minutes.

First they had me open Disk Utility and run a few checks. That did nothing, but just in case, you can run these steps:

Go to Applications/Utilites and select Disk Utility. Run Verify Disk and Disk Repair (if needed). Then run Verify Permissions and Repair Permissions. This took a fair amount of time and I received some kind of ACL issue and then it said it was repaired. As a side note, it wasn't because it also happened the second time I ran Repair Permissions.

Next came the steps that worked and I'm not sure if the previous steps are required or not. From the basic "home" screen without anything running other than Finder, select the "Go" command in the top row of your screen and select "Home" from the drop-down menu. A Finder window will open that should have a little house as the icon. Once that appears, press "Command i" (command button and the letter i). This brings up an Info window for Home. In the preview section of the Info window you should see the House icon. If you don't you are not in the right place. At the bottom of the Info winow select/highlight Computer Name (me); where Computer Name is whatever you named the computer. Regardless of the name, "(me)" will be next to it. To the right on that you should see read/write. If not, change it to read/write for that row only. At the bottom right, unlock the lock (click on it and you proably need your password to unlock). At this point the lock should be unlocked and your computer name is selected/highlighted. Click on the gear wheel and select the option "apply to enclosed items". It may take a short amount of time for the computer to repair or apply the setting to your items (which should be everything). After that, everything was back to normal. This second sequence of steps takes about one minute to do.

I faced the same problem after manually copying my folders from a time machine backup to my hard drive.

Now all those folders had this authentication issue.

After careful inspection I realized it that these files and folders had a plus sign on their access description. e.g:

$ la

drwxr-xr-x+
17 username admin  578Sep2522:20Documents

The

+

See http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/26776/what-is-the-mark-at-the-end-of-fi le-description

The solution (as provided in the link was to remove the ACL from the folder and everything inside of it:

chmod -R -N /path/to/folder

Just highlight your hard drive

get info

click lock

click plus

pick admin

click your user name

chose read write

close lock

worked for me

Worked for me. i was unable to rename any folders without signing in, which was extremely annoying. This solved that.

Your .Trash is probably owned by root not you (this happened to me using Migration Assistant)

To put it right run /Utilities/Terminal and issue the command

sudo chown your_user_name .Trash

Authenticate with your admin password and it will then behave as normal

Just had the same thing happen to me, starting today, after the cat walked over the keyboard--at least, that's the only thing I can think of, other than updating Motion, FCPX and Compressor. So thanks for the tip...and for anyone like me who isn't used to the Terminal or entering into it, if there's a space, you leave that space, so that my entry for the above was exactly this:

sudo chown michael .Trash

and then my password...it works.

Sometimes, us regular folk are overwhelmed by the rest of those ‘computer pros’ [being kind] and what you say simply goes right over our heads? :/

So for those of you who are as ignorant about this device we are currently using as I am [no offense] I have the simple, layman’s FIX for the problem of continuous “Authentication Required” pop up, which quite frankly, if not fixed will suck up 15% of the rest of your life !!!! 😟

So here we go:

1) Double click on your HD icon.

2) Go to ‘File’ - ‘Get info’ (your Macintosh HD box will pop up on the left top of your computer ^ < .

3) At the bottom, click on ‘Sharing & Permissions’ arrow > .

4) A little box should open and tell you that “you have READ ONLY permission.

5) At the very bottom right, you will see a locked padlock.

6) Click once on the lock to open it. When you do, that dreaded “Finder.app wants to make changes. Type your password to allow this” note will come up for hopefully the very LAST time ever! Whoooohoooo.....!!!

7) Enter the same password that you have been required to do for the past 27 years!!! lol

8) When you click “OK” bottom right, the lock will open and you are “IN”....

9) Once you are “IN”, don’t be afraid!!! Smile... 🙂

10) Once the lock is open, you will see this ( + - * check sign ) at the bottom, now highlighted in black.

11) Click on the + and you will be given some choices.

12) Choose “administrators” - and then ‘select’.

13) You will be taken right back to the bottom, ‘read only, write only or read & write’?

14) For “administrators”, click on ‘Read & Write’. [for safety purposes, it may be best to leave all of your other choices as “read only” so no one else can mess with your HD?]

15) Once you have highlighted those permissions, re-click on your “padlock” which will lock, save and close your changes.

16) Your Sharing & Permissions tab should now say “you have custom access”?

17) Close your Mac HD info, try drag a dropping any doc you choose into your HD icon, and “viola”!!! You are now a MacHead and your life has improved by about 100% !!!

(Ok, maybe 15%, but still, doesn’t it feel good????) lol Remember, you can ALWAYS GO BACK and make changes here or reset it how it was, but in my experience, “If it ain’t broke......” Best of luck and Blessings on your computer journey.... 😉

hmoore45 wrote:

It's getting annoying to authenticate every time I want to move a file to another folder.

This is done only when moving files between users, not within the same user folder.

If this is occuring you need to rest your user permissions

Step #5 here

Step by Step to fix your Mac

Michael

I used your 'sudo chown' etc to fix the deleted file into trash, on my new Lion OS, and it worked. Brilliant. Thanks very much. Now I find another glitch elsewhere. If I try to move a document or file etc onto the hard drive icon with Lion I am now asked to authenticate and have to type in my password each time for it to move on to the hard disk. I didn't have to do that with Snow Leopard. What is the answer please? Is it another set of words into the Utilities folder? If so what are they and what do I do?

Thank you.

Rutland

Not for the faint hearted but it drove me nuts not being able to manage the /Applications folder and Utilities, if you really want to take ownership then:

Select Applications and Get Info

Click the Padlock bottom right and enter the admin password

Click the + bottom left, it will open your contacts list

Select your name/normal login account

It will be added as Read Only, change that to Read & Write

Hit the little Gear icon at the bottom and select Apply to Enclosed Items

Let it work through it might take a while

Close the panel

Be warned this means you can also delete things that could be important so be careful ...

Michael

Thanks for that. Unfortunately despite carrying out your ideas to the letter. It doesn't work for me.

If I want to move any file/doc/picture to the HD it still says 'doc etc can't be moved because Mackintosh HD can't be modified' It gives me the option to authenticate or cancel. Obviously by clicking authenticate and putting in my password it allows me to put it into the HD. A pain of course. But it does work.

The other gliche I find on Lion is that if I go to the HD and bring up a doc or picture out of it, it has the name that I have given it, say' xyz', at the top of the item with 'locked' in grey letters next to it. If I then try to add or edit the item it says

'You don’t have permission to write to the folder that the file 'xyz' is in. You can duplicate this doc and edit the duplicate. Only the duplicate will include your changes.' It gives me the option to cancel or duplicate. If I click duplicate the duplicate doc appears with the same name 'xyz' with copy in black next to it. I can then amend/edit it and once saved it has 'xyz' with edit next to it. All very weird. I didn't get any of this on Snow Leopard. Is this a new feature of Lion?

It sounds to me like you don't have admin permissions on that username ? check what it shows in System Preferences/Accounts ?

It won't hurt either to run Disc Utility and Repair Permissions on the volume as things might be mixed up ...

With external drives you can Get Info on them and then check 'Ignore Ownership' which would fix things like this but that's not what's going on here.

I'm afraid nothing works to solve it. I've just tried your latest idea. Repairing, volume and I am listed as administrator. I'm the only one that uses my machine anyway. What is puzzling is that if you look at each doc (inside the computer in the info bit it, if you see what I mean) it doesn't have the locked box ticked. Yet it does say locked on the screen picture of the doc as my earlier e-mail. If you try to edit it. Anyway thanks for trying.

Trying to simply send things to trash without having the type password every time.

Tried the Terminal command and get this:

Last login: Mon Apr 30 20:09:29 on ttys000

MacMini:~ david m$ sudo chown david m .Trash

chown: david: Invalid argument

MacMini:~ david m$ sudo chown david m .Trash

chown: david: Invalid argument

MacMini:~ david m$ sudo chown david m .Trash

chown: david: Invalid argument

MacMini:~ david m$

I don't have any info on this, but am having the same problem. I just got a new MBP, which is awesome. We have had Macs for years and never seen something like this that requires such a complex fix. Usually, it would be an easy Sys Prefs adjustment for rights. If anybody at Apple is reading this, PLEASE address this in the next update. It's getting annoying to authenticate every time I want to move a file to another folder.

Had the same trouble on my iMac when I upgraded to Lion. Basically it wiped my name off as the Account Holder/Administrator list. Hence it didn't recognise me. Try to see if it has wiped you off. If so put yourself in again as Acount Holder/Administrator. I upgraded my wife's Macbook to Lion and it didn't affect hers. Best of luck.