accidentally changed permissions for everything to 'Read & Write' what do i do?

[chestbox]

So, i just installed this software, where i needed to change it's main folder's permission to 'read & write'. not sure what to do, i found some instructions online and i just copied 'chmod -R 777 ./*' into terminal. i thought it didn't do anything, but now i realized that every folder on the computer, and apparently every file as well, has set it's permission to 'read & write'. i'm sure this isn't the default, but how do i reverse this?
can this be much of a problem?

appreciate all the feedback

 

[adrianlondon]

Try running "Disk Utility" then "First Aid" on your disk.

 

[chestbox]

just tried it. it didn't change anything. i was thinking i would need something like terminal to change it back to default?

 

[Nermal]

That command shouldn't have changed everything on the computer unless you did "cd /" first. Can you please double-check the permissions of, say, /System to confirm whether it is indeed affecting everything?

 

[chestbox]

ok, the system folder, under permission it says - 'system - read & write' 'wheel - read only' 'everyone - read only'.
Not sure what this means.
Any other 'regular' file or folder has other names under the permission settings: 'my name' 'staff' and 'everyone', and here are all set to read & write now.

i hope i was clear enough

edit: typos

 

[Gregg2]

Usually you'd want Read & Write permissions so you can open and modify things. Are there specific cases where you don't want that ability?

 

[chestbox]

I'm honestly not sure. i never noticed how the permissions were set before. i somehow just assumed, since the installation process asked me to change the permission from the folder, that it usually isn't. the folder is in user/library/application support. and here everything is set to read&write as well.
maybe a regular file should be set like this, but files/folders in this 'application support' folder are not?
i'm really not sure, but i know that i changed something

 

[vkd]

The terminal command would only act on the directory you were in when it executed. I'm on 10.9.5 Mavericks which has options in Disk Utility to Verify and Repair Disk Permissions, but I believe they've removed this since then and simplified it (dumbed it down). Dunno what to do in that case. Go back to an earlier and arguably better version of macOS? I would.