There are three things that I can remember without looking them up: the phone number for repair to my cable service, my favorite Pizza place, and my social security number. The rest I couldn’t tell you on a bet. My solution to this area of my life is Keychain. My personal keychain has around 300 entries and I rely on it daily. In case you are not familiar with Keychain on your Mac here is what you need to get up to speed.
Keychain is a great option for your Mac and has been for some time. Now, through iCloud, you can have access to your Keychain entries on your iOS device. If you see repeated prompts to grant access to the keychain when starting an Office for Mac app, Office may have been moved to a location other than the default /Applications folder. Select Always Allow when prompted. You may encounter this dialog up to three times per app.
Getting started with OS X's Keychain. Keychain is password management system in OS X developed by Apple. It was introduced with Mac OS 8.6, and has been included in all subsequent versions of Mac OS, including OS X. A Keychain can contain various types of data: passwords (for Websites, FTP servers, SSH accounts, network shares, wireless networks, groupware applications, encrypted disk images), private keys, certificates, and secure notes. You will find Keychain in the Utility folder in the Applications folder.
Unless you indicate otherwise on a case-by-case basis, you can not open your keychain without your administrator password. Keychain will generate and store all your Safari-based passwords and autofill them for you where and as needed. However, there may be times when a website doesn't allow autofill (for example, at public terminals or when a site has been coded to specifically block autofill). I love Keychain and have since it was first released. We are all bombarded with info every day. Who can remember all this stuff?
This can be particularly true if you visit a website that you haven’t visited in a couple of months. Which password did you use the last time you were there? And don’t even think about just creating a new account. Your account is in their databases and most of the time a site will not let you create another account. You get messages like “that email address is already in use”, or “the name you have entered already has an active account with us.” Now we have Keychain available on our OS devices through iCloud. ICloud Keychain iCloud Keychain requires OS X v10.9 or later or iOS 7.0.3 or later.
IIt keeps the following account information up to date across your Mac computers and iOS devices: ▪ Website account names and passwords that Safari autofills for you ▪ Credit card numbers and expiration dates that Safari autofills for you ▪ Most Wi-Fi network names and passwords iCloud Keychain also keeps account names, passwords, and settings that you add to it, such as the registration codes for your software. Passwords and credit card information are encrypted in your OS X keychain and your iCloud Keychain. Set up iCloud Keychain on your Mac. Choose Apple menu System Preferences, then click iCloud. Turn on Keychain, then follow the onscreen instructions. Approve a device to use iCloud Keychain If you set up iCloud Keychain on your Mac, and then you set it up on another device, you may receive a notification on your Mac asking if you want to let the other device use your iCloud Keychain. Do one of the following:.
In the notification alert, click View, or. In iCloud preferences, click Option to the right of Keychain, then click Details. In the dialog that appears, enter your Apple ID password, then click Allow. Change how new devices can be approved After setting up iCloud Keychain on your Mac, you can change whether your iCloud Security Code can be used to approve iCloud Keychain on new devices. You can also change the iCloud Security Code or the phone number used to verify your identity after you use the iCloud Security Code. Choose Apple menu System Preferences, then click iCloud. Make sure Keychain is on and your Mac is approved.
Click Options next to Keychain, then make changes in the dialog that appears. How to Set Up iCloud Keychain. How to turn on (or turn off) iCloud Keychain on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Launch Settings from the Home screen. Tap on iCloud. Tap on Keychain. Toggle iCloud Keychain to On.
You will be asked to either set up an iCloud Keychain password or enter the existing one. You can also choose to verify with another device if you choose. How to Manually View Credit Card Numbers with iCloud Keychain. Launch the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad. Tap on Safari. Tap on Passwords & AutoFill under the General section.
Tap on either Saved Passwords or Saved Credit Cards. I find it particularly helpful that I can now access Keychain info on either my iPhone or my iPad. Before this became an option I always had to wait until I was at my Mac to transact business. It’s that whole memory thing.
In the innocent days of our computing youth, many of us had to memorize just one password—the one we used to send and retrieve our email over a glacially slow dial-up connection. User-account passwords? Shopping-site passwords?
What shopping sites? ITunes Store? Mac App Store? Didn't exist. In what may seem like a step backward, we now juggle dozens of passwords.
We have passwords for logging on to our Macs, accessing our iOS devices, checking our email, receiving instant messages and texts, purchasing real and virtual goods, yacking on social networking services, streaming music and movies—the list goes on and on. Fortunately, we no longer need to scribble down each and every password on a hunk of binder paper that we tape to our desks in plain sight. Our Macs can store these passwords and, in many cases, automatically fill them in when needed. But there’s more to know about passwords and the Mac's ability to store them than the simple fact that they exist. Here's a quick guide to what you can—and can’t—do with OS X’s passwords. Keychains are key Ever since Mac OS 8.6, the Mac has managed passwords with Keychain, Apple’s password-management system. The Keychain Access application (/Applications/Utilities) is a front-end to that system.
It stores a wide variety of items—including passwords for email, websites, servers, network shares, Wi-Fi networks, and encrypted disk images. Additionally, it can store secure notes, private keys, and certificates. Whenever you save a password—whether you're prompted by an application or you're saving a website’s password—it’s stored in the Mac’s keychain. The Mac places keychain files in multiple locations—/System/Library/Keychains, /Library/Keychains, and youruserfolder/Library/Keychains.
Thankfully, the contents of these various keychain files are combined into Keychain Access, so that you needn't worry about where they're held. Launch Keychain Access, and you’ll see that the window is divided into three panes. The top-left pane lists keychains accessible to you.
Below this is the Category pane. Here you can choose to view specific kinds of things stored in the keychain—passwords, secure notes, certificates associated with your account, encryption keys, and certificates used broadly by your Mac. The largest pane, to the right, displays the contents of selected category items—for example, all of the items that have a password associated with them. Except in the case of certificates, you can double-click on one of these items to open a window where you can view the item’s attributes—name, kind, associated account, location (a website or network address)—as well as its access control (meaning the applications and services allowed to access the item). Recover passwords Keychain Access can do several useful things.
For example, if you’ve forgotten a password and would like to recover it, Keychain Access is the place to go. To learn the identity of a password, select All Items or Passwords in the Category pane, then find the the item you want the password for and double-click it.
Double-click a keychain item to locate the Show Password option. In the resulting window, enable the Show Password option.
You’ll be prompted for the password for the login keychain. Enter that and click Allow, and the password will be revealed in the Password field. If you seek only to recover saved website passwords and are running Safari under Mountain Lion, your task is easier. Launch Safari, open Safari’s preferences, and click the Passwords tab. All the websites for which you’ve saved passwords in Safari will appear in a list. Enable the Show Passwords option and enter your login password when prompted.
Passwords will be listed to the right of each site. You can also remove website passwords here. Just select the site you want to delete and click the Remove button. Or, to remove all remembered passwords, click Remove All. Change the login keychain’s password When you first set up a user account, the login password used for that account is additionally assigned to the login keychain, where new passwords are stored by default. So you can simply enter the password you use with your account to uncover a keychain item's secrets.
If there’s a flaw in the Keychain Access security setup, this is it. If someone knows your account’s password, they can access the items in this keychain and then discover your other passwords. If you’re concerned about that, you can easily change the password for the Login keychain. In Keychain Access select the login keychain and choose Edit Change Password For Keychain 'login'.
You’ll be prompted to enter your current password (the one you now use for your user account) and then enter and verify a new password. Do this, log out of your account and then back in; when the Mac needs to use one of the passwords stored in the login keychain, you’ll be prompted to enter it. As long as you’re logged in, you shouldn’t be troubled for that password again. Auto-lock the keychain By default, once you’ve logged in, your keychain will be unlocked, which isn’t terribly secure if others can access your Mac when you’re not around. You can add a level of security that auto-locks your keychain. To do that, launch Keychain Access, select your login keychain, and choose Edit Change Settings for Keychain “login”. The sheet that appears shows two options: 'Lock After X Minutes of Inactivity' and 'Lock When Sleeping'.
If you choose the first option and configure it to read something like 5 minutes, your keychain will lock if it hasn’t been accessed in the last five minutes. If an application needs access to your keychain after that limit has expired, you’ll be prompted for your login keychain password. Additionally, enable the Lock When Sleeping option, and your keychain locks when your Mac goes to sleep (when you close your MacBook’s lid, for example). Click Save to implement the selected options. If you forget You’ve changed the login keychain’s password and, regrettably, forgotten the new password. Is there any hope? Regrettably, no.
Apple uses the (3DES) to secure the keychain. While not the most modern encryption scheme, it’s quite secure for everyday users—in this case, you. Unless you can recall your password, you’re out of luck and must start over. To begin that process, we’ll make a copy of the old keychain for safekeeping, in case you remember its password; we'll remove it from Keychain Access; and then we'll create a new login keychain that you’ll use in the future. To do that, move to the Finder, select Go Go to Folder, and enter /Library/Keychains. A Keychains folder containing your personal keychains will open. Locate the login.keychain file and drag it to a safe place on your Mac (the Documents folder, for example).
Now launch Keychain Access and select the login item that appears in the Keychains pane. It should appear as an empty box, indicating that it’s missing from the Keychains folder. Choose File Delete Keychain “login'.
In the sheet that appears, click Delete References. Deleting a keychain. Now choose File New Keychain. In the resulting Save dialog box, name the new keychain login and save it to the default location (which is your account’s Keychains folder). You’ll be prompted to create and verify a password for this keychain. (Be sure to choose a password that you’ll remember this time.) From this point forward, passwords that you add will appear in this keychain. And, yes, you’ll have to reenter any passwords stored in the old keychain when prompted.
Should the day come when your old password suddenly dawns on you, do this: In the Finder, open that Keychains folder and remove the current login.keychain file and put it in a safe place. Locate the old keychain whose password you’d forgotten and place it in this folder. Log out of your account and then back into it. In all likelihood you’ll be prompted for the password for your keychain by some startup item. When you are, enter the password and the keychain will be unlocked. Share your login keychain If you have multiple Macs, each one has its own login keychain with its own set of passwords. Wouldn’t it be great if each Mac had access to the same keychain?
![Keychain Keychain](/uploads/1/2/5/4/125427614/152671260.jpg)
Like so: Make a copy of the login.keychain file inside the Keychains folder on the Mac that has the most complete set of passwords, and copy it to your other Macs. Remove the login.keychain file from each Mac’s Keychains folders and put it in a safe place in case something goes wrong.
![Apple keychain access for mac pro Apple keychain access for mac pro](https://storage.googleapis.com/igeeksblog/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Search-Keychain-Access-in-Spotlight-Search-on-Mac.png)
Place the copied login keychain file within the user’s Keychains folder. Log out and log back in. If your login password on the Mac you’re currently using is different than the one on this master Mac, you’ll be prompted for the login keychain’s password. Once you enter it, you should have access to the same passwords as that master Mac.