Unable to Edit Files in WSL Ubuntu – Permission Denied Fix

Issue Overview

While working on a Python project in WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) with Ubuntu, I faced an issue where I couldn't save changes to a file (app.py) using Notepad++ or even IDLE.

Subsystem path: \\wsl.localhost\Ubuntu\home\atif\tts-app 

Error in Notepad++

When trying to save, the following message appeared:

Save failed
Please check whether the network where the file is located is connected.

Error in IDLE

In IDLE, the error was clearer:

Permission denied

This suggested that it might be a file ownership or permission issue.

Investigation and Debugging

To debug the issue, I opened the WSL terminal and navigated to the project folder:

cd ~/tts-app
ls -l

Here’s the output:

total 48
drwxr-xr-x 2 atif atif  4096 Jul  9 16:06 __pycache__
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  4210 Jul  9 16:04 app.py
-rw-r--r-- 1 atif atif  4210 Jul  9 16:04 app.py.bak
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root  4096 Jul  9 16:03 backupCode
drwxr-xr-x 2 atif atif 12288 Jul 10 12:11 logs
drwxr-xr-x 3 atif atif  4096 Jul  9 15:42 static
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root  4096 Jul  9 15:41 templates
drwxr-xr-x 6 atif atif  4096 Jul  9 14:29 venv

As you can see, app.py and the backupCode directory were owned by root, not by the current user atif. This is why the file couldn’t be modified from regular editors like Notepad++ or IDLE — because they don’t run with root privileges.

Solution: Change File Ownership

To fix this, I changed the ownership of all files and folders inside the current directory to my user (atif) using the chown command:

sudo chown -R atif:atif .

After running this command, I verified again with ls -l:

total 56
drwxr-xr-x 2 atif atif  4096 Jul  9 16:06 __pycache__
-rw-r--r-- 1 atif atif  4210 Jul  9 16:04 app.py
-rw-r--r-- 1 atif atif  4211 Jul 10 13:37 app.py.bak
-rw-r--r-- 1 atif atif  4210 Jul  9 16:04 app.py.bak.bak
drwxr-xr-x 2 atif atif  4096 Jul  9 16:03 backupCode
drwxr-xr-x 2 atif atif 12288 Jul 10 12:11 logs
drwxr-xr-x 3 atif atif  4096 Jul  9 15:42 static
drwxr-xr-x 2 atif atif  4096 Jul  9 15:41 templates
drwxr-xr-x 6 atif atif  4096 Jul  9 14:29 venv

Now all files are correctly owned by atif, and I was finally able to save them through both Notepad++ and IDLE without any errors.

Final Notes

• This issue typically occurs when files or directories are created or copied using sudo or another tool that assigns ownership to root.

• Always check file permissions using ls -l when you encounter saving or editing issues in WSL.

• Use chown carefully — make sure you understand which directory you're applying it to.