npm install permission denied (macOS)

Question

To install a Bootstrap theme I want to run npm install. However I always receive a permission denied error.

I already tried nvm and then switched with nvm use 10.9.0 to run npm install.

I also tried sudo chown -R $(whoami) ~/.npmand sudo chown -R $USER /usr/local/lib/node_modules. Neither solved it and now I am bit out of ideas how I can continue. I use macOS High Sierra.

Marcs-MBP-3:masterclass Marc$ npm install
npm WARN deprecated gulp-uglifyjs@0.6.2: Since gulp-sourcemaps now works, use gulp-uglify instead
npm WARN deprecated babel-preset-es2015@6.24.1: 🙌  Thanks for using Babel: we recommend using babel-preset-env now: please read babeljs.io/env to update! 
npm WARN deprecated browserslist@1.7.7: Browserslist 2 could fail on reading Browserslist >3.0 config used in other tools.
npm WARN checkPermissions Missing write access to /Users/Marc/Desktop/Dev/masterclass/node_modules
npm ERR! path /Users/Marc/Desktop/Dev/masterclass/node_modules
npm ERR! code EACCES
npm ERR! errno -13
npm ERR! syscall access
npm ERR! Error: EACCES: permission denied, access '/Users/Marc/Desktop/Dev/masterclass/node_modules'
npm ERR!  { [Error: EACCES: permission denied, access '/Users/Marc/Desktop/Dev/masterclass/node_modules']
npm ERR!   stack:
npm ERR!    'Error: EACCES: permission denied, access \'/Users/Marc/Desktop/Dev/masterclass/node_modules\'',
npm ERR!   errno: -13,
npm ERR!   code: 'EACCES',
npm ERR!   syscall: 'access',
npm ERR!   path: '/Users/Marc/Desktop/Dev/masterclass/node_modules' }
npm ERR! 
npm ERR! The operation was rejected by your operating system.
npm ERR! It is likely you do not have the permissions to access this file as the current user
npm ERR! 
npm ERR! If you believe this might be a permissions issue, please double-check the
npm ERR! permissions of the file and its containing directories, or try running
npm ERR! the command again as root/Administrator (though this is not recommended).

npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR!     /Users/Marc/.npm/_logs/2018-08-22T12_46_51_786Z-debug.log

Answer 1

Check permissions of your project root with ls -l /Users/Marc/Desktop/Dev/masterclass/. If the owner is not $USER, delete your node_modules directory, try changing the owner of that directory instead and run npm install again.

cd /Users/Marc/Desktop/Dev
rm -rf ./masterclass/node_mdoules/
chown -R $USER ./masterclass/
cd masterclass    
npm install

Answer 2

For Mac;

Run this on the Terminal >

sudo chown -R $USER /usr/local/lib/node_modules

Answer 3

I was having a similar issue, but the accepted answer did not work for me, so I will post my solution in case anyone else comes along needing it.

I was running npm install in a project cloned from GitHub and during the clone, for whatever reason the write permission was not actually set on the project directory. To check if this is your problem, pull up Terminal and enter the following:

cd path/to/project/parent/directory
ls -l

If the directory has user write access, the output will include a w in the first group of permissions:

drwxr-xr-x  15 user  staff  480 Sep 10 12:21 project-name

This assumes that you're trying to access a project in the home directory structure of the current user. To make sure that the current user owns the project directory, follow the instructions in the accepted answer.