Add your account as a sudoer on Mac

Published: 2019-04-17 • Lastmod: 2019-09-12
Tags: mac • command-line

1. Switch to an administrator account:

   su <administrator_account>
   

2. Run sudo cat /etc/sudoers and verify that the following line exists somewhere in that file: ¹

   #includedir /private/etc/sudoers.d
   

3. Use visudo ² to create a new sudoers file ³

   sudo visudo -f /etc/sudoers.d/sudoers
   

4. Press the i key for “insert” mode, then type:

   <your_account> ALL=(ALL) ALL
   

5. Press esc, then type :x followed by the return key to save your changes

6. Verify your changes:

   sudo cat /etc/sudoers.d/sudoers
   

7. Type exit to logout of the administrator account and return to your account

8. Test your sudo access by running a simple command, such as:

   sudo echo hello world
   

---

1. On Mac, /etc is a symlink to /private/etc ↩︎

2. To learn more about this command, type info visudo into Terminal and read up ↩︎

3. We’re creating a new sudoers file instead of editing the existing one at /etc/sudoers because this is a best practice. For more info see this stackoverflow thread ↩︎