sudo is required for all Ionic and Cordova commands

Aug 26, 2015 · Follow on Twitter and Mastodon

I’m currently building my first Ionic Framework app. It’s fast to setup and performs well, but I ran into a problem that forces me to use sudo for all Ionic & Cordova commands.

This problem only occurs at work, not at home. I understand that some global commands require sudo, but at work I also have to use sudo for commands like:

  • ionic platform add android
  • ionic build ios
  • ionic run android

If I don’t use sudo, Ionic isn’t able to remove assets in the platform folders. I can also not open the project in Xcode, due to missing permissions.

I finally found a terminal command that fixes these problems whenever they happen:

sudo chown -R $(whoami) ~/<path to your project folder>

Run it, and you will no longer have to use sudo when running Ionic & Cordova commands. You will also be able to open the Xcode project without warnings.