Enabling a standard user account to access the unified system log on macOS using the log command line tool

As part of my work, I occasionally need to pull information from the unified system log, either directly on a Mac or from a sysdiagnose file, using the log command line tool. However, I also prefer to run as a standard user account most of the time and use privilege elevation tools like SAP’s Privileges or the privilege elevation functionality built into Jamf’s Self Service+ tool to get admin privileges when needed.

The combination of the two sometimes means I get halted while working because the log command line tool needs an account with admin privileges to run when it is getting log information from the unified system log on the Mac I’m using. Using the log command line tool doesn’t require root privileges or require admin authorization, but it needs to be run by a user with admin rights.

Note: This requirement for admin privileges does not appear to be coming from the log command line tool itself, but instead is coming from the unified system log. The reason I’m saying this is that accessing logs using the log tool from a sysdiagnose file does not require admin privileges. If any readers have more information about this topic, please let me know in the comments.

This has been an occasional annoyance because I get pulled briefly out of my focus while working in order to elevate my account’s privileges and then go back to my work. However, I was able to develop a solution for this issue using the sudo command line tool. For more details, please see below the jump.