

The best-case scenario is that there is another admin account on the Mac for which the password is available. Reset the Password from Another Admin Account As before, you can accomplish this task in a variety of ways, depending on how the Mac in question was set up and what information you know. Unfortunately, that article is long past its shelf life, so here’s a current guide to resetting an admin password in macOS 10.13 High Sierra. Apparently, lots of people forget their macOS passwords or need to help friends or clients who have lost their passwords. More than four years ago, Alicia Katz Pollock wrote “ Five Ways to Reset a Lost Administrator Password” (17 January 2014), and through the vagaries of Google’s search algorithm, it remains our most popular article to this day.

#1667: OS Rapid Security Responses, 1Password and 2FA, using Siri to request music.#1668: Updated Rapid Security Responses, OS public betas, screen saver bug fixed, “Red Team Blues” book review.Questions? Comments? Have a fix? Post them below or e-mail us!īe sure to check us out on Twitter and the CNET Mac forums. Use this tool to set a firmware password, and then nobody will be able to reset PRAM, boot to Safe Mode, Single User Mode, or to alternative boot drives unless they either disable the password or supply it when prompted. To do this, reboot to the OS X installation drive (be it a DVD or the Recovery HD partition in OS X Lion or later), choose your language when prompted, and then choose "Firmware Password" option in the Utilities menu. To prevent booting to alternative boot modes (e.g., Single User Mode), you simply have to enable a firmware password on your system. By default OS X does allow for this however, there is a quick security measure you can take to prevent it and ensure that only you can perform these actions. This method can be used to reset any administrative account status on any Mac system, and as a result you might be concerned that anyone can make these changes to your system. You can then set the account to access this one so all of the previous accounts' settings and data are applied to the new account. When you do this, the system will detect the old abandoned home folder of the previously deleted account and inform you that a home folder already exists. The last step is to go back to the Users & Groups system preferences and create a new account but use the same user name as the previous account (ensure that the "short" name of the account matches the abandoned home folder in the /Users directory). "="" data-uuid="487fa23b-fdb4-11e2-8c7c-d4ae52e62bcc" data-size="medium" data-float="right" data-image-caption="The Firmware Password utility should be in the OS X Installer's "Utilities" menu." data-image-credit="Screenshot by Topher Kessler/CNET" data-image-alt-text="Apple's firmware password utility in OS X" data-image-target-url="" data-image-crediturl="" data-image-filename="LionFirmwarePasswordLocation.png" data-image-date-created="9"> To allow writing to the drive, run the following command: This is a very powerful mode to work in, but is very convenient for troubleshooting.īy default, when booting to Single User Mode the hard drive is set to a read-only state, which ensures that you do not make changes unless you explicitly tell the system to do so.
RESET MAC OS X ADMIN FULL
This mode loads you as the "root" user, which gives you full and unrestricted access to every aspect of the system via a command-line interface. Restart your computer while holding the Command and S keys, which will drop you to a terminal command prompt. With the hidden flag file removed, you can use the Setup Assistant to create a temporary account for administrative purposes.
