The root user, sometimes called the superuser, is a special user account in Mac OS X that has read and write privileges to all areas of the file system. The root user can move and delete any file in the system, including system files not available to any other user. Because it's easy to damage the computer by moving or deleting some files, use the root account with extreme caution.

By default the root account is not active.

The root user should only be used for specific administration or monitoring tasks. After completing a task as the root user, log out of Mac OS X and log back in using a normal or administrator user account.

Disable root access if you do not use it often.

See also