How To Open A Root Finder Window In MacOSX Snow Leopard

Published Date Author: , Posted August 14th, 2011 at 12:57:03pm
  1. In the Terminal application, type the following:
    sudo /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/MacOS/Finder
  2. Then, click on an empty spot on your desktop – NOT in an existing Finder window.
  3. Now, type Command-N or select New Finder Window from the File menu.
  4. To end your root Finder session, type ^C in the Terminal window.

Notes:

  • You won’t be able to interact with any files you might have on your desktop, as those belong to your logged-in user account and root’s desktop is currently (and transparently) sitting on top of it.
  • If you attempt to open/double-click a file which requires root access to read, the corresponding application will open as the logged-in user and the file will fail to open. To get around this, you can launch the app’s /Contents/MacOS executable as root and open the file from within the app.

Another approach I found was to use Applescript, and to add a Quit option to Finder by running the following in Terminal:

sudo defaults write com.apple.finder QuitMenuItem 1

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