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I have a Macbook Pro M1 running Sequoia 15.1.1.

I only have one user installed on my Mac, and this user suddenly seems to have lost its admin status. Looking in system prefs shows that the user is now "standard". I have no clue how this could have happened. I did not try to rename my user, or anything like that.

I presume this would work:

  1. Erase the Macbook completely
  2. Reinstall the system
  3. Create a new admin user and log in
  4. Reimport the old user from Time Machine backup with Migration Assistant
  5. Give back the privileges using the newly created admin
  6. Keep both admin accounts for safe measure

Is there a way to create a new admin from my current state or a shortcut to getting my user re-added to the admin group membership?

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  • I would strongly advise NOT erasing the entire device. The OS partition, the Recovery partition and the boot firmware are not at fault, and erasing them is only likely to make things worse.
    – benwiggy
    Commented Nov 29 at 12:50
  • Don't worry, I was thinking of just erasing "Macintosh HD" via Disk Utility in Recovery. But I'm in contact with Apple Support tomorrow, so let's see what their technician will suggest.
    – Marty Schellman
    Commented Nov 29 at 13:46
  • Note that "Macintosh HD" is the OS partition. "Macintosh HD - Data" is where everything you do goes. If Support comes up with a solution, please post it here as an answer!
    – benwiggy
    Commented Nov 29 at 13:59
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    Question, have you tried Priviliges app on your computer? You might be able to change your account over to Admin from Standard. github.com/SAP/macOS-enterprise-privileges
    – ErniePC12
    Commented Nov 29 at 17:41
  • 2
    @ErniePC12 Your hint was a godsend!! This solved my problems! I already had the app Privileges installed (did that years ago and completely forgot about it), and it always had admin rights. The recent update for the app started it in the background and revoked my admin rights (which is the default setting). Starting it gave me back my rights, and I changed the defaults to "never revoke". Problem solved!! I am soooo grateful for the hint, thanks so much! I was afraid of redoing everything. You SAVED MY DAY!!!
    – Marty Schellman
    Commented Nov 30 at 10:42

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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Turns out that my admin rights were removed by an app called Privileges.

I had installed it for years and forgot about it. There was a recent update for it, which introduced a new feature "withdrawing admin rights at startup" set as default. As a consequence, it withdrew my admin rights after the next startup. And I didn't know why it happened.

The idea of this app (see website) isn't a bad one, but a bad idea is to forget about it, while it's still running in the background.

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  • 1
    Same here. You have saved me a LOT of destructive actionism. THANK YOU!
    – Sebastian B.
    Commented Dec 5 at 16:57
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Check if you installed a program designed to manage who is the admin:

If you’re not using enterprise type managed tools, reports of this on recent OS have lessened.

For sure, don’t follow any old guides (like this) about removing /var/db/.AppleSetupDone after booting to single user mode.

Were this my Mac, I would immediately try to install macOS on an external drive to be sure your backup is good and seen from the new external OS before trying to finesse the system you have. Then I would call Apple support as I would know more about what’s broken and they would know I have the means to do a reinstall saving tons of time. Or I could ask them to fill in gaps in my process why I couldn’t do a reinstall.

If you’re sure your backup and erase is solid, you could experiment as follows:

If you can enter iCloud recovery mode and try resetting the password, that should be somewhat safe to attempt.

Here is an old guide that also might possibly work especially steps 2 and 3. Anything years before that will not work. You will have to finesse the system to getting the proper file system mounted in a state to reset the admin account permissions.

The big problem is your admin group isn’t designed to ever drop the last admin user, so who knows what else is broken on your OS. A reinstall is the prudent thing to do unless Apple Support has a great fix and can let you know they are seeing this as a specific bug with a limited scope of breakage and it’s not a sign of general failure of your OS (at least in terms of account management).

Of course if you know your backup is recent and good, you can start with erase install and just not worry why this happened. Your suggested process is solid and straightforward. Erase, import, move on and solve this only if it recurs.

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