Admin user vs normal user

[nelly22]

Is this possible? I create just one normal user in Yosemite and rarely when i need to do any admin stuff, i go to Users preference pane and change this normal user to admin user and then do the admin thing and then turn user back to normal. I don't want two separate users.

 

[chown33]

It requires admin privileges in order to change an account from normal to admin (or any other change to other accounts in the Users & Groups pane).

If there are no admin accounts, how could the change you propose happen?

Catch-22.

 

[fisherking]

why wouldn't you just keep your one account as an admin account? you can only make changes with your mac's password, so no one else can effect an install, for example.

why would you add all the extra steps? just be the admin...

 

[Weaselboy]

Is this possible? I create just one normal user in Yosemite and rarely when i need to do any admin stuff, i go to Users preference pane and change this normal user to admin user and then do the admin thing and then turn user back to normal. I don't want two separate users.

Like chown33 said, you will need a second account that is admin to do this.

What you can do is make the admin account then operate in your "normal" account, then when the prompt comes up saying admin permission is needed to do something you just type in the user name and password for the admin account while still in the standard account to allow the change.

This way you don't need to jump back and forth between accounts or change the account permission for the standard (normal) account all the time.

 

[frank4]

Like chown33 said, you will need a second account that is admin to do this.

What you can do is make the admin account then operate in your "normal" account, then when the prompt comes up saying admin permission is needed to do something you just type in the user name and password for the admin account while still in the standard account to allow the change.

This way you don't need to jump back and forth between accounts or change the account permission for the standard (normal) account all the time.

That is how I run my Mac. An "admin" account, and a "normal user" account which is the account I use 99.9% of the time. I came to Mac from the Windows world recently and I read that is an extra safe way to do things on Mac, just in case malware tries to install something or modify my system without my permission while I am running as a normal user.

That type of malware is what knocked out one of my Windows XP computers (where the user is the admin) about 7 years ago, it used a security hole in the Adobe PDF reader to eventually install malware in the hard drive boot sector, very hard to remove. Ransomware from eastern Europe. I didn't want anything like that happening on my Mac.