You can set the permissions for the file owner, the group owner, and all other users of the system. For your files, you are the owner, and you can give yourself read-only or read-and-write permission. Set a file to read-only if you don’t want to accidentally change it.

Every user on your computer belongs to a group. On home computers, it is common for each user to have their own group, and group permissions are not often used. In corporate environments, groups are sometimes used for departments or projects. As well as having an owner, each file belongs to a group. You can set the file’s group and control the permissions for all users in that group. You can only set the file’s group to a group you belong to.

You can also set the permissions for users other than the owner and those in the file’s group.

If the file is a program, such as a script, you must switch on the Executable as Program switch to run it. Even with this option selected, the file manager will still open the file in an application. See Executable text files for more information.

You can set permissions on folders for the owner, group, and other users. See the details of file permissions above for an explanation of owners, groups, and other users.

The permissions you can set for a folder are different from those you can set for a file.

You can also quickly set the file permissions for all the files in the folder by clicking Change Permissions for Enclosed Files…. Use the drop-down lists to adjust the permissions of contained files or folders, and click Change. Permissions are applied to files and folders in subfolders as well, to any depth.