How to add user to a group from Mac OS X command line?

macos mac command-line osx-leopard

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Solution 1

sudo dseditgroup -o edit -a john -t user admin
sudo dseditgroup -o edit -a john -t user wheel

It's also possible to do this with dscl, but to do it properly you need to both add the user's short name to the group's GroupMembership list, and add the user's GeneratedUID to the group's GroupMembers list. dseditgroup takes care of both in a single operation.

Solution 2

For those who are looking for the same answer to newer versions of Mac OS, I've found this: To add a user to a group, you need this command ($USER is the current logged-in user) :

$ sudo dscl . append /Groups/wheel GroupMembership $USER

I was trying to add my user to the wheel group, to be able to manipulate the /Library/WebServer/Documents folder. Besides that, I had to change the permissions to that folder, as by default it is 755. I've changed it to 775 with:

$ sudo chmod -R 775 /Library/WebServer/Documents

This way I can manipulate the folder content without changing the owner of the folder.

ps. Still working on Catalina (10.15.3)

Solution 3

Check out this link:

http://osxdaily.com/2007/10/29/how-to-add-a-user-from-the-os-x-command-line-works-with-leopard/

Adding a user is something easily accomplished using the built in GUI tools that ship with OS X, however any power user can appreciate the possible efficiency gained from using the command line. So in the spirit of efficiency here are the steps necessary to add a user to your Mac OS X system all with our good friend, Terminal.app.

The important bit is here:

Create and set the user’s group ID property.

dscl / -create /Users/toddharris PrimaryGroupID 1000

275,803

Author by

Meltemi

Updated on September 17, 2022

Comments

Meltemi almost 2 years

I am trying to add a user to a group from the command line but can't figure out how. Specifically this is on Mac OS X Server version 10.5.8.

The user is 'john', the groups are 'admin' and 'wheel'.
Meltemi over 13 years

tried it with sudo dscl . -append /Groups/admin GroupMembership username and though it added the user to "admin" but it also added a bunch of other groups like com.apple.sharepoint.group.1 and com.apple.access_screensharing ect... ?!?
gorootde over 13 years

That is strange. On the other hand, perhaps these are groups that have been associated with that user, or it somehow inherited them from elsewhere.
gorootde over 13 years

Did you read through the man pages for dscl at all?
Rohit Muneshwar over 10 years

Sorry i'm not too cleared with the usage. Lets say i want to add the username bob into wheel, will it be sudo dseditgroup -o edit -a bob -t user wheel ?
Gordon Davisson over 10 years

@夏期劇場: Correct.
Christoffel de Gruyter about 10 years

I had to add -p as well so I could enter my password.
vault almost 10 years

Still valid on osx 10.9.2; copy and paste if you are searching for apache: sudo dseditgroup -o edit -a `whoami` -t user _www
WHO's NoToOldRx4CovidIsMurder about 9 years

Still works in 10.10.3 (Yosemite).
Eray about 9 years

Will these commands affect user's recently groups?
Gordon Davisson about 9 years

@Eray I don't understand the question; can you clarify?
alexw over 7 years

Working in El Capitan (10.11.6) as well!
Aaron Williams almost 6 years

This is an excellent resource: blog.travismclarke.com/post/osx-cli-group-management
Sary over 5 years

Can anyone confirm whether this works on 10.14 (mojave) ?
mwfearnley about 5 years

It works for me on 10.14.4.
LeOn - Han Li about 5 years

Great. works with Mojave 10.14.5. Thanks for sharing!
ROOT about 4 years

Thanks! worked for me.
Gwyneth Llewelyn over 3 years

Well well. What do you know. It still works under macOS Big Sur 11.0 Beta (20A5384c)! Thanks!