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I copied a lot of read-only files from a Windows system to my Mac. When viewing the Info for each file using "Get Info", I can see they are Locked. I'm writing a bash script to copy over some files and I'm getting an error that says "Operation not permitted" So, first I need to unlock the files. Since I'll be pulling files from the Windows system often, I want my script to unlock these files.

What is the terminal command to unlock "Locked" files on OSX?

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4 Answers 4

Reset to default
206

To unlock files you can use:

chflags -R nouchg /PATH/TO/DIRECTORY/WITH/LOCKED/FILES/
  • chflags = change flags on files/folders such as "locked"
  • -R = recursive or for everything and follow directories within the specified directory
  • nouchg = means the file can be changed
  • /PATH/ = of course is the path to the files you want to change. Something like: ~/Sites/mysite/directory/with/locked/files/ works as well.
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  • 1
    Looks like I found the solution just as you were responding. I also learned that the -R is for recursive. So, to unlock all files in the current directory use<br/> chflags nochg *<br/> and to change just one file<br/> chflags nouchg onefile.txt See: mehtanirav.com/2009/04/16/recursively-unlock-files-on-mac-os-x
    – Michael Prescott
    Sep 14, 2009 at 2:37
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    There's another relevant flag schg which is the system immutable flag (see developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/…) The command to clear it is similar: sudo chflags noschg PATH/TO/LOCKED/FILE
    – Andy Madge
    Jan 12, 2015 at 20:22
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    Use /bin/ls -lO /path/to/file to view the macOS flags on files. Notice the full path to the macOS 'ls' command. This is needed if you have GNU Coreutils installed.
    – Tony Barganski
    Nov 7, 2018 at 5:57
  • @AndyMadge - I needed to use that flag, from following directions on this page: askdavetaylor.com/how-to-delete-locked-file-on-mac-macos. But the link you provided is dead. Do you have an updated link?
    – Adam_G
    Mar 16, 2021 at 19:54
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    @Adam_G seems like Apple have moved the web page, but you can view the man page directly in MacOS terminal with the man chflags command
    – Andy Madge
    Mar 17, 2021 at 12:34
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This is helpful if you want to search an entire directory and unlock all files.

In the terminal cd to the directory

This command finds and will print a list of them.

$ find . -flags uchg

This command unlocks them.

$ find . -flags uchg -exec chflags nouchg {} \;

You can use the first command to double check that all the files are unlocked after running the second command, voilà !

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    While this works, it can be extremely slow for large numbers of files because it starts a new process for each file.
    – Richard Waite
    Aug 23, 2014 at 23:52
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    I find I have to use + : find . -flags +uchg even to find files that only seem to have the one flag, uchg, set.
    – Chris F Carroll
    Nov 28, 2019 at 13:05
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You can also use SetFile -a l, even though it does the same thing as chflags nouchg:

SetFile -a l file.ext

-a l unsets the bit for the locked attribute. You can install SetFile by downloading the Command Line Tools package from Xcode's preferences or from developer.apple.com/downloads.

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  • This is the method that worked for me on macOS Sierra with a few files copied from a Windows machine. I used : SetFile -a l ~/Documents/Arduino/Samples/*
    – callisto
    May 18, 2017 at 6:59
  • As fyi, /usr/bin/SetFile (setfile) was deprecated with Xcode 6 along as were other tools supporting Carbon development; although SetFile still appears to install as part of Xcode 12 additional command line tools. See man SetFile
    – marc-medley
    May 29, 2021 at 3:38
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There are actually two lock flags that can be set on a file: uchg and schg. A file that has the uchg flag set is immutable by normal users but it is mutable by the system. A file that has the schg flag set is immutable by anyone. Both flags can be set at the same time.

To see which flags are set on a file, use

ls -lO FILE

That is a capital letter o, not zero.

To definitely unlock a file, you would have to execute

chflags nouchg,noschg FILE

as if both flags were set and you remove only one of them, it will still be locked.

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