cocoaPods pod install Permission denied

I solved this problem by running the following command:

sudo chown -R $USER ~/Library/Caches/CocoaPods

and

sudo chown -R $USER ~/.cocoapods

Please replace username and groupname with your Mac login username/groupname.

I only used (where username is your Mac login username)

sudo chown -R username ~/Library/Caches/CocoaPods

and

sudo chown -R username ~/.cocoapods

when I tried with the groupname parameter I got

chown: username.groupname: illegal user name

Of course I used my own username and groupname :)

The issue is with Mac OS X's default installation of Ruby. The Ruby/Gems installation is owned by root in the location you specified.

This is normal behavior unless you install a Ruby manager. I would recommend rbenv but RVM is popular as well.

These installed your Ruby installation in your $HOME folder. This way your user owns the Ruby and gem executables.

Removing the directories worked for me:

sudo rm -R  ~/Library/Caches/CocoaPods
sudo rm -R  ~/.cocoapods/repos

If some other problems still exist.

Remove the Pods directory and the podFile.lock file.

Cocoapods just adds the directories again.