how to access keychain passwords on new mac

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. 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. In Keychain Access select the login keychain and choose Edit > Change Password For Keychain “login”. Enter that and click Allow, and the password will be revealed in the Password field. You’ll be prompted for the password for the login keychain. In the resulting window, enable the Show Password option. IDG Double-click a keychain item to locate the Show Password option. 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. For example, if you’ve forgotten a password and would like to recover it, Keychain Access is the place to go. Keychain Access can do several useful things. 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). 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. 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 top-left pane lists keychains accessible to you. Launch Keychain Access, and you’ll see that the window is divided into three panes.

Thankfully, the contents of these various keychain files are combined into Keychain Access, so that you needn’t worry about where they’re held.

The Mac places keychain files in multiple locations-/System/Library/Keychains, /Library/Keychains, and youruserfolder/Library/Keychains.

How to access keychain passwords on new mac