Homebrew: Permissions Denied Issue Fix (OS X / macOS)

homebrew-permissions-issue.md

Homebrew Permissions Denied Issues Solution

sudo chown -R $(whoami) $(brew --prefix)/*

great, you save my life

In my case I had to setup a new local user on my machine and to remove the old one.
Then the folder ( defined by brew --prefix ) looses its owner.
With this the owner is set to the new local user and - it works!

In my case, had this problem as I created a new user for development and installed brew in my original Mac OS Monterey user account. The mentioned solution solved my problem. Thanks !

Nice~ Greate job!

Thanks! Worked for me (macOS Ventura 13.3.1)

Hi ! how can i fix this
/Users/emvlp/.zprofile:24: permission denied: /opt/homebrew/bin/brew
Could someone tell me the steps?
Thank you so much !

Thanks @erma4ina

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and command: sudo chown -R "$(whoami)":admin /usr/local

it ":admin" for sum in user

Thanks, this worked for me!

(macOS Ventura 13.9, Intel Mac)

Worked for me on Intel Mac with macOS Ventura 13.5. Thank you :)

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Worked for me on Monterey 12.6.5! (Late 2016, Intel silicon)

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thank you

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Although this works, this is BAD solution.
The brew prefix $(brew --prefix) is /usr/local and that directory should be accessible for all users on the system.
With only one user, setting that to the current user is no problem, but as soons as a second user is added, this does not work and breaks all the permissions for it.
The proper way to do it is to have the installer use a group and make any user that needs access a member of it, so it works for multiple users.

The group on most folders is admin so adding a user to the admin group and making sure permissions between group and user are the same at least for directories brew uses should fix this.

The command to add user john to group admin is
sudo dseditgroup -o edit -a john -t user admin

None of the above worked for me. Keep getting permissions errors when updating homebrew.

Example Permission Denied Error:

/Users/{insert username}/Library/Caches/Homebrew/api/formula_names.before.txt: Permission denied
The solution that worked was just deleting the cache files:

sudo rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/Homebrew/

Additionally, ran the following for good measure:

sudo chown -R {your username}:admin ~/Library/Caches/Homebrew/
sudo chmod -R 755 ~/Library/Caches/Homebrew/

Then reinstall Homebrew:
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

be of use

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thank you, the first solution worked for me on my headless macOS Catalina (version 10.15) ci server

thank you !!! what exactly did I just do ??? 🤔🤔🤔 you saved my lifeee

the command changes the ownership of all files and directories within the Homebrew installation directory to the current user, effectively giving the current user full control over these files and directories.

i'm just coming from linux, it didn't hit me that could be the problem. like mention above this will break when you add another user. the solution by @VGerris would be much better if potentially you'd want to have other users in the system

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You save my life

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Thank you, you are amazing

None of the above worked for me. Keep getting permissions errors when updating homebrew.

Example Permission Denied Error:

/Users/{insert username}/Library/Caches/Homebrew/api/formula_names.before.txt: Permission denied The solution that worked was just deleting the cache files:

sudo rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/Homebrew/

Additionally, ran the following for good measure:

sudo chown -R {your username}:admin ~/Library/Caches/Homebrew/
sudo chmod -R 755 ~/Library/Caches/Homebrew/

Then reinstall Homebrew: /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Worked for me. thank you!

Thank you!

None of the above worked for me. Keep getting permissions errors when updating homebrew.

Example Permission Denied Error:

/Users/{insert username}/Library/Caches/Homebrew/api/formula_names.before.txt: Permission denied The solution that worked was just deleting the cache files:

sudo rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/Homebrew/

Additionally, ran the following for good measure:

sudo chown -R {your username}:admin ~/Library/Caches/Homebrew/
sudo chmod -R 755 ~/Library/Caches/Homebrew/

Then reinstall Homebrew: /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Best fix. This worked for me on Monterey v12.6.3

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Hi, for my case the error was Error: Permission denied @ dir_s_mkdir - /private/tmp/homebrew....

And the solution was

sudo chown $(whoami):admin /private/tmp/

I just updated to MacOs Sonoma 14.5, I do not know if that was the case ...