Quick and easy root Finder access

Nov 20, '02 09:33:16AM

Contributed by: Anonymous

This hint works great for me, a 'Terminal-fobic':

  1. Place the Pseudo application icon in the Dock
  2. Run TransparentDock and select 'Place "Quit" menu item in Finder Dock Menu'
  3. Quit Finder from its new dock menu
  4. In Pseudo, select Launch from File menu
  5. Go to /System -> Library -> CoreServices -> Finder.app and doubleclick
Voila! You are now running Finder as Root with full visual GUI. After finishing your system stuff:
  1. Quit Finder again from the dock menu
  2. Click the Finder dock icon to start Finder again (now as your own user) and everything is back to normal.
[Editor's note: Although this will work as described, I haven't found the need to run a root Finder in quite a while. Since you can now change the ownership and permissions on any file through the Get Info dialog (assuming you are logged in as admin), it's possible to do any editing one might wish to do without the need to resort to a root Finder. Do a Get Info on the file to be edited, note the existing ownership and permissions, change the owner to you and make sure the owner has write permissions, edit the file with BBEdit or whatever, then switch the permissions back to their original settings after saving the file. This is a much safer way of doing things ... but since macosxhints.com is all about full access to information, I chose to publish the above shortcut to a root Finder.]

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