The command chown /ˈtʃoʊn/, an abbreviation of change owner, is used on Unix and Unix-like operating systems to change the owner of file system files and directories.

Unprivileged (regular) users who wish to change the group membership of a file that they own may use chgrp.

[1] The version of chown bundled in GNU coreutils was written by David MacKenzie and Jim Meyering.

[2] The command is available as a separate package for Microsoft Windows as part of the UnxUtils collection of native Win32 ports of common GNU Unix-like utilities.

[3] The chown command has also been ported to the IBM i operating system.