Locked System Preferences

Yeah…I’m full of wondering how to do things today.

So…like all good macOS users…my daily driver account is not admin but since I’m the only one using the laptop it would be more convenient to not have to put in admin credentials when wanting to change something in say System Preferences. So…I went into System Prefs, Security and Privacy, Advanced, and unchecked the box about requiring admin credentials to change locked System Prefs settings.

Closed Sys Prefs and opened them again…still need a password. Tried logging out and back in and then rebooting and admin credentials still required.

Am I missing something? All I want to do is be able to get into System Prefs without another password. I’ve already put my daily driver account in the sudoers group for terminal stuff…I would have thought unchecking the box above would have solved the problem.

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I actually run as an admin user, never had any trouble with it. But like you, I don’t have that box about requiring admin privileges checked either. And yet, I still have to authenticate every time before I can change most prefs I’m interested in. I’m sure there’s some logic to it, but it’s certainly not clear to me what it is.

You can go into Security & Privacy and click on the advanced button. There’s an option to not require an admin password for some functions but recent MacOS versions require a password for certain features regardless.

Yeah…did that with no change that I noticed.

Coincidentally, I was just wondering this same thing. And I have no solution.

That was my guess, among others, but all failed to change the behavior of macOS, which continued to ask for a password. Sigh.

And on a bit of a sidetrack, why can I not tell macOS to unmask the password? It feels like security theater on top of security theater.