I understand why it is a good idea to have a password on the AirPort Extreme wifi router. But why does the Airport Utility continuously ask for this password? Could it, at the very least, get this password from the Keychain? I am nearly at the point of setting the password to “password” to reduce the pain and frustration of using this Apple utility.
iPad Air 2, iPadOS 13
There are up to 3 different passwords on the AirPort Extreme.......
1) Base Station (device password)
2) Wireless Network Password
3) Disk Password (for an attached hard drive)
Not sure which password that you are referring to here.
If it is the Base Station (or device password) AirPort Utility on the Mac provides the option to have the password stored in your keychain.
Likewise the option is there to have your keychain remember the Wireless Network password
Finally, same option exists for the Disk Password
I can't remember AirPort Utility on an iOS device asking for a password unless it is a new device that is connecting for the first time, so I'm not able to duplicate the error that you are reporting. Perhaps another user can help if that is the case.
I should have explicitly stated that this is the AirportUtility app on iOS. The dialog that pops up is vague but it does say enter the “device” password. By trial and error I’ve determined that this means the password of the Apple Extreme router itself. I do not have a disk in my router and my router is not a new device.
But, in any case, iOS does not offer an option, that I can find, for storing the”device” password on the keychain. If the macOS airport utility does that’s wonderful and iOS should do so as well.
I understood that you were using the iOS version of AirPort Utility and tested with both an iPhone and iPad here.
You might want to go into the iCloud settings on the iOS device to make sure that the keychain is being stored in iCloud. Then, when you enter a password, the keychain should be updated and stored in iCloud.
If you are still having problems the setting in the keychain may have become corrupted, I would change the Base Station password and then save the password again to see if that helps.
Otherwise, I'm out of ideas since I cannot duplicate the error here on a Mac or either of my two iOS devices.
I know you are just trying to be helpful but if “keychain not updated to cloud” was the problem I would have discovered that a long time ago. Every password for every webpage and every app that I use EXCEPT for Airport Utility, Connect, and AppStore (all Apple apps, curious, hmm?) are updated correctly and I have a desktop, laptop, iPhone, and three iPads.
I know bugs in Apple software are rare (!) but this just might be one?
We see keychain password corruption issues all the time on this forum.
Airport Utility Device Password Needs to be Stored in the Keychain
