How to Switch to an Admin User in Terminal to Run Sudo Commands on a Mac

This video shows you how to user Terminal on a Mac to switch to an elevated admin account and run sudo commands. This is useful when you are logged into a standard account and need to run sudo commands with terminal, but cannot unless you have admin privileges.

[billselak]

Super userful, thanks! Appreciate the quick and clear tut.

[MeanMaoriMean]

Saved my day. Many-many thanks to You Sir! 🙏

[gp]

This worked for me on MacOS High Sierra 10.13.3. Thanks!

[Pantherblox]

You did not even help bro I’m tryna figure out how to enter password

[milesfabishak]

I needed to switch to admin because I'm using symbolic links. When I start the command it says permission denied. Any idea?

[AnaMercedesRueda]

thanks! How do I get out of sudo command on terminal? I got stuck there and don't know how to switch now. Thanks!!

[seamusdemora]

That works on Sierra... it works on High Sierra also, except you have to put up with some complaints from OS X. After you su to the Admin user & enter the password, you'll get a message that goes something like this:

"shell-init: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: Permission denied".

However, if you pay attention, you'll see at the prompt that you are the Admin user now (assuming you entered the userid & pw correctly). You can confirm this by entering `whoami`. When you finish, simply type `exit`, and return to your regular user account.

[courtneyritter]

What is when you inter the password has a key?

[rajankumar-upck]

m getting below error
bash-3.2$ sudo jamf policy
sudo: /etc/sudoers is world writable
sudo: no valid sudoers sources found, quitting
sudo: unable to initialize policy plugin

[helenastahl]

does this harm your computer in any other way?

[KiaraYou]

How do i know the password and/or how i get it?

[blusanders]

I am the only user/admin on my computer other than the guest. Should I not be able to install something from the terminal? Or do I not understand what's going on here? Thanks.

[datboynat]

its not allowing me to enter my password in command prompt, im typing but nothing happening. how do I fix this issue?

[Antferguson_Photography]

I don’t know the password for the admin user. If I did I wouldn’t need to bypass in terminal

[pokefan]

i put in my password, hit enter and it just said sorry no idea what that means i'm obviously the only one using my computer so why wouldn't my login password be the correct password?

[chrisfrieberg]

HELP! Is there a way instead of manually typing the password, to create a bash script that will enter the usernames PASSWORD automatically????

[mohammednawrani]

what password do we put in ours or the other accounts

[lillidawson]

How can you figure out ur administrators username