MacOS – How to repair ~/Library permissions

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While migrating to Yosemite, I manually copied some ~/Library files and folders from my old system to my new system. Now some of the affected apps show weird behavior. Often they cannot save their preferences. One example is the iTunes error message when I try to backup my iPhone:

itunes could not back up the iphone because the backup could not be saved on the computer

Whenever I check, my user has read & write permissions. Disk Utility Repair permissions unfortunately does not help here.

What are the correct permissions for files and folders in ~/Library and ~/Library/Preferences? And how do I set them?

Best Answer

It's possible that the Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs option in the resetpassword tool will correct those permissions for you, though I'm unsure how 'deep' into your home directory it will reset.

This blog post gives the steps for Lion, which appear to be the same in Yosemite (Note: that last link details instructions for resetting a password, which is obviously not what you are doing here, which is why I linked to the Lion instructions. However, the same tool is used in each process):

  1. Restart, and before you hear the chime, hold down the Command and R keys.

  2. You’ll be at the Repair Utilities screen. Click the Utilities item in the Menu Bar, then click Terminal.

  3. In the Terminal window, type resetpassword and hit Return.

  4. The password reset utility window launches, but you’re not going to reset the password. Instead, click on icon for your Mac’s hard drive at the top. From the dropdown below it, select the user account where you’re having issues.

  5. At the bottom of the window, you’ll see an area labeled Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs. Click the Reset button there.

The reset process takes just a couple of minutes. When it’s done, exit the programs you’ve opened and restart your Mac.

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