SIP, short for System Integrity Protection, locks down the important system folders on your Mac. Even an app with admin rights can’t change them. That’s a good thing, and for most people it should stay on. But some tools and tweaks refuse to work while it’s enabled, and then you have to switch it off yourself. You can only do that from Recovery, so here’s how.
Turn SIP off
- Shut your Mac down completely.
- Start it in Recovery. On an Intel Mac, press the power button and immediately hold Command-R until the Apple logo appears. On an Apple Silicon Mac (M1 and newer), keep the power button held until “Loading startup options” shows up, then click Options and Continue.
- In the menu bar choose Utilities → Terminal.
- Run the command below. Recovery may ask you to confirm and enter your password.
- You should see a message saying SIP has been disabled.
- Open the Apple menu and click Restart.
Recovery Terminal
csrutil disable
Check if SIP is on
Not sure what state it’s in? Open Terminal in normal macOS (no need to boot into Recovery) and run this:
Terminal
csrutil status
It answers either “System Integrity Protection status: enabled.” or “System Integrity Protection status: disabled.”
Turn SIP back on
Once the tool or tweak you needed it off for is done, switch it back on.
- Shut down and start in Recovery again, the same way as above.
- Choose Utilities → Terminal from the menu bar.
- Run the command below.
- Wait for the message saying SIP is enabled, then restart from the Apple menu.
Recovery Terminal
csrutil enable