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A new login keychain will start collecting and storing the passwords for Wi-Fi networks, email accounts, Web sites, and other logins as they occur. Quit Keychain Access and restart the Mac.If that button is not present, choose Edit > Keychain List (Command-Option-L), select the login keychain, and click the minus button to delete it.If you have that button, click it to remove the old keychain and create a new one with the new password. In newer versions of Mac OS X, you’ll see a button labeled Reset My Default Keychain in the General pane.Open Keychain Access from /Applications/Utilities, and choose Keychain Access > Preferences (Command-,).Newer versions of Mac OS X may prompt about this problem at startup otherwise you’ll need to delete the keychain and start it over again, using these steps: Since the keychain is protected by the now-forgotten administrator password, there’s no way to get back into it. Reset Login Keychain Password - No matter which of these methods you use to reset a forgotten administrator password, it won’t update the password protecting the account’s login keychain, which stores all of the user’s passwords. Which you should use depends on the specific version of Mac OS X, and how the Mac is set up.īut first, there’s an important caveat about any of these methods, related to the login keychain. Let’s explore all the options to reset a password. Starting with 10.7 Lion, you could still call on all those options, but Apple added a method so easy that even an inexperienced user can do it - the Apple ID-based password reset. Because she also couldn’t find the original system CDs that shipped with her iMac, I had to resort to some advanced techniques few home users would ever be able to figure out. Several years ago, I was helping a client upgrade her Mac running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, but she couldn’t remember her administrator password.
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This article is over four years old and some details have changed.įor up-to-date help, read “ Three Ways to Reset a Lost Admin Password in High Sierra” (5 July 2018). #1604: Universal Control how-to, show proxy icons in Monterey, Eat Your Books cookbook index.#1605: OS updates with security and bug fixes, April Fools article retrospective, Audio Hijack 4, 5G home Internet.#1606: Apple's self-sabotaging App Store policies, edit Slack messages easily, WWDC 2022 dates.#1607: TidBITS 32nd anniversary, moving from 1Password to KeePass, pasting plain text, Mail fixes anchor links, RIP Eolake.#1608: How to test Internet responsiveness, Wordle takeoffs, understand cryptocurrency.
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