Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Who's disabled rootless mode and why?
- Thread starter ZVH
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
i turn it off it i want to install or change something OS-related....then turn it back on. no reason to leave it off (but great to have control over that).
I turn it off to run CAT on my late 2011 MBP with a 2012 BT/WiFi card. Allows for Handoff/Airdrop between my iPhone 6+ and MBP.
On my Retina iMac I have it disabled. I use XtraFinder, cDock (have the default Dock currently though), BetterTouchTool, ThemeEngine, and have changed the icons of a few stock apps. The tiny bit of added security isn't worth repeatedly booting into Recovery to enable/disable it for someone like me who likes to customize their Mac.
Last edited:
Do all those things require disabling rootless? I have bettertouchtool as well but never messed around with the system. Is there some additional capability that app would have if I did?
does it? (just curious). or does it work because you installed it previously, disabling SIP in the process? (am curious as i use bartender, but am sure i had to disable SIP initially to install it)...
With Bartender 2 you no longer need to disable SIP at all. The only restriction is it cannot control the Spotlight menu item unless you disable SIP, but it can manage everything else.
cDock and XtraFinder. I didn't even know BetterTouchTool requires it to be disabled, I use that too. And I wanted to remove the Spotlight item with Bartender, so there's another reason.
I've disabled it.
My Macs always ran fine before "rootless" entered the picture.
Never had a virus or problem in 28 years of Mac'ing.
But then again, as a matter of course, I permanently disable Spotlight, Time Machine, all "cloud" stuff, etc.
But that's just me.
Too old to change now.
My Macs always ran fine before "rootless" entered the picture.
Never had a virus or problem in 28 years of Mac'ing.
But then again, as a matter of course, I permanently disable Spotlight, Time Machine, all "cloud" stuff, etc.
But that's just me.
Too old to change now.
ah, then i needed to disable SIP for the moment anyway (no need for the spotlight icon...command-spacebar is just too easy...)
I've disabled it on both my laptop as well as my "server" desktop (I put server in quotes because it's not OS X Server but I am running various server software on it).
On my laptop, my employer's VPN software needed to install something and for now, does it in a SIP-protected directory.
On my "server", I run my own version of Postfix (mail server) which needs to replace something in /usr/sbin/. Note that this is not something most users would ever be doing.
There was one other thing that required it but I've since changed my software configuration to move that out of a SIP-protected directory.
On my laptop, my employer's VPN software needed to install something and for now, does it in a SIP-protected directory.
On my "server", I run my own version of Postfix (mail server) which needs to replace something in /usr/sbin/. Note that this is not something most users would ever be doing.
There was one other thing that required it but I've since changed my software configuration to move that out of a SIP-protected directory.
isn't this built in? i play surround sound albums, and watch surround sound movies (from my mac thru plex). what does this do differently?
If you've disabled Spotlight are you able to search in Mail, or have you (a) blown off this capability in order to get rid of Spotlight or (b) use some other mail app? I've got Spotlight pared back as much as possible, but can't turn it off because I do want to be able to search in Mail.
personally...i just removed the menubar icon. easy to use command-spacebar. but...why anyone disable spotlight completely? it's such a great resource... (am curious, anyway)...
bartender (at least, that's what i use. also removed notification center...). and i manually removed the location services icon that pops up every time i wake my mac, or forecast bar checks the weather...
agreed. but (especially on the 13" mbp, and i imagine, on the airs, and the 12" mb), menu bar real estate is valuable. wish apple gave us more options with things like this (i can, for example, remove wifi from the menu, but can't hide spotlight)...