Both work fine though, so you can use whatever method you’d like.

This is an easier and faster method than the approach taken for resetting lost passwords or using the Mac OS X boot DVD, because it’s changing an existing root users password rather than creating a new admin user account. The Mac will now boot as usual and you’ll have access to the machine with the new password. The username is what you’ll want to change with the passwd command.Īfter the password is reset and confirmed, you can exit out of Single User Mode by typing exit or reboot. If you’re fixing someones machine and you don’t know the username to reset, just look in /Users with: On the next boot the changed admin password will be usable as anticipated.ĭon’t know the admin username? No problem Or by using the standard manual restart methods of keyboard shortcuts, shutdown, or holding down the power button. Rebooting is possible through the command line by by typing: The password should now change as expected, where you can then reboot and use the admin user account as expected. #3 launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ Note the primary difference is using ‘launchctl’ between mounting the drive and changing the password: If you have issues with the above approach, try the following command sequence with newer versions of Mac OS X. Changing Admin Password in OS X Lion, Mountain Lion, and laterįor users with OS X 10.7.3 and later, including OS X 10.8+ Mountain Lion, there may need to be an additional step to load open directory. That is standard practice in the command line world. Note that a password will not be visibly typed when using the ‘passwd’ command, it looks as if nothing is being entered at all. You’ll need to enter the new password twice to reset and confirm the changes.After the filesystem is mounted, you can reset any users password using the following command:.The next command mounts the root Mac OS X drive as writable, allowing you to make changes to the filesystem:.The first command checks the Mac OS X filesystem for errors and fixes them, it can take a few minutes to run:.You’ll see a note where Mac OS X tells you that you need to run two commands in order to make filesystem changes, this is necessary so let’s handle that first.Reboot the Mac and hold down Command+S at boot to enter into the command line.

First you need to enter Single User Mode.

This is a multistep process but it’s easy to follow: Change an Admin Password in Mac OS X Single User Mode

Macos administrator password