Enter administrator commands in Terminal on Mac

You must be an administrator or root user, also called superuser, to execute many of the commands used to manage a server.

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For example, if you’re not an administrator or a root user, entering the shutdown command gives you an error:

This is because the shutdown command can be run only by the root user or by an administrator user with root user privileges.

To run commands with superuser privileges, use the sudo command. sudo stands for superuser do.

The following example works on computers with macOS installed, so don’t run it unless you want to restart your computer:

You’re asked for the password of the current user.

Only administrator users can use sudo. If you’re not logged in as an administrator, you can do so by entering the following command, where adminUsername is the name of an administrator user:

You’re asked to enter the password for adminUsername, after which a new shell is opened for that user.

If a command requires it, you can use su to switch to the root user. Under normal circumstances, you shouldn’t log in as the root user.