sudo with Touch ID in macOS Sonoma

Enabling Touch ID for sudo commands hasn’t changed much since at least Big Sur - with the introduction of macOS Sonoma, Apple made it even easier to make it a persistent setting.

Follow these steps, and you’re done:

1. Switch into the /etc/pam.d directory - you will find a sudo_local.template file there.

   $ cd /etc/pam.d
   $ ls -l sudo*
   .r--r--r-- 283 root 16 Sep 15:28 sudo
   .r--r--r-- 179 root 16 Sep 15:28 sudo_local.template
   

2. Copy the sudo_local.template file to a new file called sudo_local and uncomment the auth sufficient pam_tid.so line.

   sudo cp sudo_local.template sudo_local
   sudo -e sudo_local
   

   The file should look like the following:

   # sudo_local: local config file which survives system update and is included for sudo
   # uncomment following line to enable Touch ID for sudo
   auth       sufficient     pam_tid.so
   

3. That’s it. From now on, you can use Touch ID to approve sudo commands. Create a new terminal session and give it a try.