"Apply to Enclosed Items" permissions HOME FOLDER

Here are a couple of alternatives for doing it right:

Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions

Boot to the Recovery HD:

Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.

Repair

When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported then click on the Repair Permissions button. When the process is completed, then quit DU and return to the main menu. Select Restart from the Apple menu.

Repair Permissions for Home Folder

Boot into Single-user Mode then enter each command line pressing RETURN after each:

chmod -R -N /Users/username

chown -R username:staff /Users/username

chmod -R 600 /Users/username

After each command has been run restart the computer by entering:

reboot

Given it's the Home folder where you 'own' everything it shouldn't matter because you want everything to belong to you. But it's a bad idea outside of the Home folder where it can really screw up the system.

I don't think there is any reason to be concerned. And, if you find you can't open something in your Home folder because of a permission error, then you can always change it for that file. So I would not be worried.

We are on the same page. 😀

Yes, there are lots of libraries, especially the Applications Support folder, but I do not think it really matters what their permissions are. All of mine that I've checked are owned by me. If there were a problem the OS would let you know with a pop-up dialog.

Photos and iMovie are not in the Home folder. They are in the Applications folder. You haven't changed permissions there, and you don't want to.

Correct. Your documents, downloads, movies, music, pictures, etc. are all stored in their respective folders in the Home folder all with your ownership permissions.

OS X, being essentially a Unix offshoot, can be puzzling if you've never had to deal with the complexities of the Unix OS. The windowing system you normally see in OS X is intended to hide all the Unix stuff behind a more friendly interface. Not much different from what Windows does except that Windows doesn't use Unix in the background, rather it uses MS-DOS. If you know Windows then you know OS X, essentially. The following links may help in the transition to OS X:

Mac 101- Mac essentials

Switch 101- On Windows, I used to...

Apple - Support - Switch 101

Apple - Support - Mac 101

Switch 101- Windows vs. Mac navigation

That is an uninformed comment that is correct as it relates to system related folders such as the primary root Library folder, Users folder, Applications, and System folder.

Although the Home folder is created during the original OS X installation, if you check its permissions you will find that you are the owner.

The remarks about ACLs should be considered cautiously. Most things do not have ACLs unless they have been assigned custom permissions for some reason. However, one can reset all ACLs as follows:

Reset User Permissions and ACLs in OS X

Boot to the Recovery HD:

Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.

From the Utilities menu select Terminal. At the Terminal prompt enter: resetpassword. Press RETURN. When the window opens select your startup drive where it says "Select the volume containing the user account:" At the bottom of the window you will see, "Reset Home folder permissions and ACLs." Click on the Reset button.