MacOS – How to access files that are owned by another user

data-recoveryfilesystemmacmacostime-machine

I recently formatted my Mac Pro and I copied all the files to external drive, I didn’t use TM. After creating a new account on a new OS I can’t open the files, because the old user can’t be located. I can’t copy the files to the new account. I need to access my logic files but I can’t find a solution.
I tried making a new TM and editing the contents and replacing it with my old files, but editing the TM is prohibited.
Is there a way I can restore a Mac using a copied drive or a possibility that I can custom make a TM drive with the files.
Or If there is a solution where I use a windows machine to open the folders.
I need to get to these files

Best Answer

Even if you have the same username on a different instance of macOS (it could be the same computer), the OS doesn't see the two as being the same.

What you need to do is take ownership of the files.

Using Finder

You can do this in finder by using "Get Info" when selecting a file or folder. In the example below, I'm selecting an entire folder to take ownership of.

Press ⌘ CommandI for "Get info"
Unlock the "Sharing and Permissions" pane
Add your name by clicking the plus (+) symbol
Then select "Make username (Me)" the owner

Apple has an excellent support document detailing these steps.

Using Terminal

It's actually much easier (IMO) to do this via Terminal Just issue the following command (you'll need to enter your password at the prompt)

$ sudo chown -R <YourUserName> /path/to/file

Where...

-R = recursively; it will take ownership of it and it's sub-folders (if any)
<YourUserName> is your login name. If you're not sure issue the command whoami at the prompt
/path/to/file is the full path of the file or directory you want to take ownership of

Related Solutions

Mac – Can’t delete copied Time Machine files

I went through this just last week. Time Machine backups have ACL permissions set. There are a few ways to see these. The first is ls -e. This is from my TimeMachine .bash_profile

ls -le .bash_profile  
-rw-r--r--@ 5 gregcain  staff  6508 Mar 21 13:57 .bash_profile  
 0: group:everyone deny write,delete,append,writeattr,writeextattr,chown

and this is for my normal one

ls -le .bash_profile  
-rw-r--r--  1 gregcain  staff  6748 Mar 29 13:08 .bash_profile

If you want to modify these settings, you'll need chmod:

chmod -N .bash_profile

MacOS – Migrating to new user account: must chown old account’s files… I think

You can check and re-assign ownership recursively over a directory tree with find, stat and chown.

#!/bin/bash

olduser=<oldusername> # replace this with your old username
newuser=<newusername> # replace this with your new username
dir=<dir> # replace this with the directory you want to run through

find $dir | while read filename
do
  owner=$(stat "$filename" | cut -d ' ' -f 5)
  if [ $owner == $olduser ]
  then
    chown $newuser $filename
  fi
done