Unable to make Applications folder writeable in Mac

Question

My Vuze cannot update itself as it claims that my application folder is not writeable.

I tried to make it writeable by

chmod 777 /Applications

I get the following error

$chmod 777 /Applications/
chmod: /Applications/: Operation not permitted

How can you make /Applications folder writeable?

Answer 1

You're likely not root, and as such cannot modify that directory.

If you really, really want to do this, add 'sudo' in front of your command, that will give the run of the command root access.

Whether you really need to do this, that's up to you.

Answer 2

Try running the Disk Utility's Repair Permissions button.

Answer 3

Assuming your account has admin privileges, try:

 $sudo chmod 777 /Applications

And then enter your password.

The danger that starblue mentioned is that by doing this, you are allowing essentially any user on your system full and complete read/write/execute access to your Applications folder.

I hope it's apparent why this is normally, probably a bad idea, that you know what you're doing, etc. etc.

Edited to further add: if you just want to give yourself write access, you're probably much better off with:

 $sudo chmod u+w /Applications

rather than granting everyone complete access.

Answer 4

On OS X, users can typically add or delete apps from the Applications folder, but can't modify apps. Depending on the app that's trying to update itself, you may be able to delete it, or you could chmod -R u+w the app bundle itself. You wouldn't want to do it for the whole Applications directory, though.