Mac OS X Accounts Privileges Explained

[Fahad]

Most Mac OS X users use their Admin account for daily use which isn't technically wrong but it's much safer to use a normal account.

So Here I will show you a digram of what each account can do:



I highly recommend using a "Standard" as it's more secure.

[Omi]

He benefit to using standard is that when anything wants to acsess the root of te system, it asks for authorization. On an admin account it doesn't always.

[Computergizmo]

Sweet now to figure out what my administrators password is....

[MacMan]

i have done this on my computer, set myself as a "standard user". keep in mind that even the administrator of the computer technically isnt the highest type of user you can be, "root" is the highest.

[Omi]

But standard accounts ask you everytime a change is made to root, I don't believe this is the case in admin accounts.

[MacMan]

But standard accounts ask you everytime a change is made to root, I don't believe this is the case in admin accounts.

yup thats correct but the admin still isn't the root. have you ever tried to access certain folders and havent been able to get into them? (most of these folders are hidden, such as the spotlight indexing folder).

[Omi]

Nope, but i'd assume not even an admin account can access those?

[MacMan]

Nope, but i'd assume not even an admin account can access those?

haha yup, spot on

[Omi]

So lets say for some reason you had (if this would ever occur) to modify those files, what do you do?

[MacMan]

So lets say for some reason you had (if this would ever occur) to modify those files, what do you do?

i guess you would do it from the command line, you can log in via root from there and you could probably modify the priveleges that you need to modify the contents from the Finder. not that you would because it might stop the computer from working lol.