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Password Needed to Move Items to Trash - How Do I Fix This?

I can't move items to TRASH without entering a password. I just upgraded to OS X v.10.8.2. I get a message "Finder wants to make changes. Type your password to allow this". Anybody know how to get rid of that prompt?

OS X Mountain Lion (10.8)

Posted on Oct 11, 2012 3:31 AM

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Posted on Oct 11, 2012 3:44 AM

Login as an Administrator then open the disk utility that can be found in the Utilities Folder, select your Macintosh HD then select Repair Permissions. Once it has finished try to Trash the file again.

12 replies

Apr 8, 2013 9:26 AM in response to AGGGAL

One should be cautious about running superuser commands since they certainly can be dangerous to your system. But after some research, Guimesquita2's reply worked like a charm on Mac OS X 10.8.3. Alternatively, Repair Permissions in disk utility did many things, but did not fix this specific unwanted behavior for me.


Working in the Terminal app, two unix commands, sudo command and chown owner-user:owner-group directory are concatenated:

sudo is superuser do, and "requests" one-time limited superuser access to the command (here, chown).

Guimesquita2's example targets the folder ~/.Trash by default, i.e. trash belonging to the user logged in.

The example command line will not change anything elsewhere in the system (such as another user's .Trash hidden folder). It seems to be pretty darn safe.


As a bonus, it also let me (again) see the unemptied contents of Trash which I could not see before.

Jun 24, 2014 10:07 PM in response to Guimesquita2

Thank you so much for this tip! I haven't been able to use my trash w/out a password for years. Just thought it was one of those things in a new OS update or something. I thought my "trash folder" was always empty, because I had to enter a password to securely dispose of it. Then recently, I've noticed that when I deleted large video files (I'm a video producer) no space was freeing up from my hard drive. I also started getting alerts that my startup disk was full, and the other night I deleted around 40 gigs of video and duplicate files to free up some space. And no change.


I verified disk and repaired disk and reset pram and restarted, re-indexed spotlight, and nothing. 4GB left on the hard drive. There is even a string about how it might have been a snapshot - time machine issue. And then for some reason this issue of having to enter a password to delete popped in my head and I looked at this thread. Entered the command in terminal, an lo and behold, over 60GB of invisible stuff in my Trash Folder suddenly appeared. Now I have more space than I know what to do with and I can use the trash folder like the old days. Thanks again for the advice.

Dec 22, 2014 2:54 PM in response to dbaxter3

Hi,

My problem is similar to the one described above, however when I deleted well over 330Gb of video files (backed up on a separate external drive), instead of freeing up much needed space on my MBPs HDD, it simply lists the data as 'Other' on my Storage tab of 'About this Mac'. I will be needing free space to work with in the very near future and this lack of freed up space is very worrying. I am running Mavericks on my late 2012 MBP at present, though would like to update to Yosemite (another reason for wanting to free up space). Any help/suggestions gratefully received - thanks.


For the record; I don't think my problem is to do with stopping/restarting TM, because I rarely have the relevant external HDD connected, hence TM not running, but I have not thoroughly explored this theory yet.

Sep 28, 2016 7:02 AM in response to AGGGAL

QUICK FIX:


Right click on Macintosh HD (the little disk drive icon on your desktop) If you don't see this icon - go to your preferences under finder and make sure hard disks is checked. Right click on Mackintosh HD and choose get info. When this vertical dialogue box comes up - scroll down to sharing and permissions. If it is greyed out - you will need to unlock it by pressing the lock icon found on the bottom right hand side of the dialogue box. Click the + button under sharing and permissions - add Administrator (just click on admin in the new dialogue box.) Once Administrator shows up in sharing and permissions - make sure to change your permissions to READ and Write. Close dialogue box. Now you should not have to enter a password to move or delete any files. Worked for me!

Sep 28, 2016 12:24 PM in response to ArtSmartAdmin

Hi,


The Original Post to which you have replied was posted on Posted on Oct 11, 2012 11:31 AM

The Time bit is as seen on my end in the UK (GMT) and will vary depending on the Time Zone you are in.


IN addition to that the Original Poster has never come back to post in this thread again.

According to their Profile page (AGGGAL) and then the Content tab/item it is the only post they made.






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8:24 pm Wednesday; September 28, 2016


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Password Needed to Move Items to Trash - How Do I Fix This?

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