How to Change File Ownership with the Linux chown Command

Published 2026-08-05 · Learn Linux

The chown command changes which user and group own a file. You need root privileges, so run it with sudo. sudo chown alice notes.txt makes alice the owner, and sudo chown alice:staff notes.txt sets the group too.

Change the owner

Pass the new owner followed by the file. Only root can do this, hence the sudo prefix.

$ sudo chown alice notes.txt

Change owner and group together

Use the user:group form to set both at once. This is how you hand a file to a team member and their project group in one command.

$ sudo chown alice:developers notes.txt

Change only the group

Leave the owner blank before the colon to change just the group: :developers.

$ sudo chown :developers notes.txt

Apply to a whole tree with -R

Use -R to change ownership recursively. A common fix after unpacking a website is to hand the folder to the web server user:

$ sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/site

Chown vs chmod

chown sets who owns a file; chmod sets what they may do with it. Ownership and permissions together decide access. Check the current owner with ls -l. See chown for the full reference.