Unlock a Mac System Preferences Pane

unlock-mac-system-preferences-pane.md

Unlock Pesky System Preference Pane Lockdown

Note, you're local mac account must have sudo privs for this to work. If you're in the same boat I'm in, there is some piece of management software (e.g. casper) installed on your system that removes access to system preference panes when you login (to a domain).

In my case, the "Security and Privacy" pane was removed by a network admin for I'm sure they believed to be very important reasons, but this prevents me from using my window management tool (BetterSnapTool).

On to the steps

In this example, I'm unlocking the "Security and Privacy" pane. You will need to substitue your locked panes plist below.

1. Alter com.applesystempreferences.plist binary plist

    cd /Library/Preferences
    sudo plutil -convert xml1 com.apple.systempreferences.plist
   

2. Open com.apple.systempreferences.plist with sublime

   • Add to EnabledPreferences:

       <string>com.apple.preference.security</string>
     

   • Pack the plist back up. sudo plutil -convert binary1 com.apple.systempreferences.plist

3. Alter com.applesystempreferences.plist binary plist

    	cd /Library/Managed\ Preferences/<your username>
    	sudo plutil -convert xml1 com.apple.systempreferences.plist
   

4. Open com.apple.systempreferences.plist with sublime

   • Add to EnabledPreferences section of the document:

      <string>com.apple.preference.security</string>
     

   • Pack the plist back up.

       sudo plutil -convert binary1 com.apple.systempreferences.plist
     

5. Kill the preferences daemon

    	sudo killall cfprefsd
   

6. Now open your System Preferences, and your pane should be unlocked.