All Mac computers need an administrator account to be able to function properly and perform certain tasks, ranging from installing certain software, to changing some system preferences. A variety of situations can arise causing a Mac to lose an administrator account, often if a user attempted to add a new admin account or new user account to the Mac, or rename an existing users account.
Whatever the case, if the Mac does not have an administrator account available, here’s how you can add an admin account to macOS in macOS Monterey, Big Sur, and earlier.
Missing Mac Admin Account? Create a New Admin Account in macOS
This process will involve booting into Recovery Mode to remove a setup file from the Mac, which allows the macOS setup assistant to run again, thereby allowing you to create a new admin account on the Mac. This works with macOS Monterey and Big Sur, and earlier, for both M1 and Intel Macs.
- Boot the Mac into Recovery Mode by restarting the Mac and holding down Command+R (Intel Macs) or the Power button (M1 Macs)
- For M1 Macs, choose “Options” at the boot menu that appears
cd /Volumes/Macintosh HD/var/db/
rm .AppleSetupDone
You’ll now have created a new admin account which is fresh and completely different user account than your standard user account. The standard user account and all user data still exists, assuming this was done properly.
You can either use this admin user account to authenticate as needed with administrator requests and logins, or you can modify the original user account to become an admin account again. We’ll cover that next.
How to Set Standard User Account to be Admin Account in macOS
Want to restore your original Mac user account to be an admin account again? That’s easy:
- Boot into the newly created admin account, then pull down the Apple menu and choose “System Preferences”
- Go to “Users & Groups” and click the padlock icon to be able to modify user accounts
- Select the original user account that you want to modify to Admin account privileges
- Check the box for “Allow user to administer this computer”
- Restart the Mac again, this time logging into the original user account which now has upgraded privileges to be an administrator user account again
If you feel so inclined, you can then delete the temporarily created admin user account from the Mac, or leave it be and have it available as a backup admin account, or even the only admin account.
There are other options available if you end up in a situation where the admin account becomes a standard user account, for example you can go about
converting a standard user account to admin account via command line, which is more appropriate for advanced users.
Have you run into this issue where an admin account becomes downgraded to a standard user account? Did the above solution fix this problem for you by creating a new admin account and then giving admin access to the original user account? Did you find another solution? Let us know your experiences in the comments.
