My System Settings are broken.

jasmeena519 wrote:

I tried restarting, I tried rebooting in Safe Mode, and I even reinstalled MacOS Sequoia.

Everything is there. I'm a student so any of the real important things are on my OneDrive. And due to System Settings not working, I can't really sign in to iCloud.

—A SafeBoot Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support will sort many anomalies

Does a quick disk repair before it fully boots up, and certain system caches get cleared and rebuilt, third party system modifications and system accelerations are disabled temporarily.

Login and test. Reboot as normal and test. Caches get rebuilt automatically.

This test will tell you if third party interference; most extensions etc are not loaded in safe boot mode.

—Test issue in another user (or guest user) account Change Users & Groups settings on Mac - Apple Support

This will tell you if it a universal issue or isolated to your user/admin account. 

no progress you can try Revive, if no resolve Restore will wipe everything

How to revive or restore Mac firmware - Apple Support

How to revive or restore Mac firmware - Apple Support

if you need assistance take it in...

In or out of warranty you can get a free over the counter 'Apple Service Diagnostics' test /assessment

call your local store and see if you need to make an appointment

for a "hardware issue"

Genius Bar Reservation and Apple Support Options - Apple

Outside the USA

Contact Apple Support - Apple Support

Local USA—

Store List - Apple Store - Apple

Around the World—

Choose your country or region - Apple

It almost looks like you're logged into a guest account.

Log out. Not shut down or reboot. Just log out.

Can you log in with your usual account?

Within the Finder Option-click the Go menu & select "Library". Look at the Preferences folder.....I'm betting there is a red mark on it which is indicating that you don't have permissions to access it. I've seen this with a couple of my organization's Macs and also a couple of other online posts as well.

I'm not near the computer where I fixed this issue, so I'm going to wing it a bit from memory. Launch the Terminal app and run the following command & post the results here:

sudo  ls  -hled@  ~/Library/Preferences

This command will prompt you for macOS admin user password. Nothing will appear on the screen as you type the password, so press the "Return" key to submit it.

From my own personal experience the actual fix will involve a couple of other commands, but I first need to see & confirm if this is indeed the problem.

Please run the previous Terminal command as well as the following one:

sudo  ls  -hled@  ~/Library

And did you notice any red marks for any item within that Library folder...not just the Preferences folder? Also look within the "Preferences" sub folder as well for any item with a red mark.

FYI, I've never seen that many missing System Setting options. On my organization's Macs it was only 2 or 3 that I actually noticed, but I know the other online posts I've seen that they had different missing items & issues (and even more items that could not be configured). Even though I fixed my organization's Macs, I did advise them to perform a clean install & restore the system from a backup because we have no idea what else may have been corrupted that we hadn't noticed yet.

jasmeena519 wrote:

i didn't see any red marks anywhere else either :/ i ran the two commands in Terminal and I can't tell if anything happened. I'm going to do a clean install and restore tomorrow and hopefully it'll be solved.

The Terminal commands were just to provide us with details of the permissions associated with the Library folder and the Preferences folder. Those commands would not make any changes. If the permissions had been incorrect, then I would have provided more Terminal commands to fix the permissions in an attempt to try fixing the problem without needing to resort to a clean install.

When restoring from a backup, you may want to restore from a backup you know was made before this issue occurred. Of course you can try your latest backup if you are not sure....the worst that would happen is you perform another clean install to try an older backup.

The clean install & restore from backup is the best option since there could be more issues that just have not yet been discovered.

Please let us know how it works out.

Do you have backups?

Are your documents and data still there?

At this point, I'd say make an appointment at the genius bar.