is-admin-user

Check whether the current Python process is running as an administrator.

is-admin-user is a tiny, dependency-free Python package that works across Windows, Linux, and macOS. It exposes a programmable function interface for checking whether the current process has administrative privileges.

Installation

pip install is-admin-user

For local development:

pip install -e .

Usage

Python

from is_admin_user import is_admin_user

if is_admin_user():
    print("Running as administrator/root")
else:
    print("Running as a standard user")

You can also use the shorter alias:

from is_admin_user import is_admin

if is_admin():
    print("Administrative privileges are available")

Command line

is-admin-user

The command prints true and exits with status code 0 when the current process has administrator/root privileges. It prints false and exits with status code 1 otherwise.

For scripts that only need the exit code:

is-admin-user --quiet

Platform behavior

• Windows: returns True when the current process token is running with administrator privileges.
• Linux: returns True when the effective user ID is 0 (root).
• macOS: returns True when the effective user ID is 0 (root).

On Windows, an account that belongs to the Administrators group may still return False if the Python process was not started with elevated privileges.

API

is_admin_user() -> bool

Returns True when the current Python process has administrator/root privileges, otherwise returns False.

is_admin() -> bool

Alias for is_admin_user().

Development

Run the test suite with:

python -m pytest