How to disable smart card authentication on Ventura (on Apple Silicon)

I recently set up my Yubikeys for MacOS authentication (3 keys in total so that I have backups). After setup, when I tested it, it turns out that only the last key that you register is actually valid - this renders all your backup keys useless.

I therefore want to remove smart card authentication from my Mac so that I can revert to using password authentication. I found this guide for removal of this setting but it seems to be very old and is out of date - none of the files listed exist: Configure macOS for smart card-only authentication - Apple Support

Does anyone have any other guidance on how to remove smart card-only authentication from Ventura?

MacBook Pro Apple Silicon

Posted on Feb 16, 2023 3:28 AM

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Randall_2023

Level 5

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Posted on Feb 16, 2023 4:57 AM

This might be helpful. But unless you are comfortable with Terminal commands you might not want to use these:

Advanced smart card options on Mac - Apple Support

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Randall_2023

Level 5

4,658 points

Feb 16, 2023 4:57 AM in response to euanmax

This might be helpful. But unless you are comfortable with Terminal commands you might not want to use these:

Advanced smart card options on Mac - Apple Support

euanmax Author

Level 1

5 points

Feb 16, 2023 5:45 AM in response to Randall_2023

Hi Randall,

Thanks for your response, I have looked at that article and tried some of the commands but there are no files under there that match what they're using in the article, eg:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.security.smartcard Logging -bool true

The file they mention isn't there (com.apple.security.smartcard):

# ls -l /Library/Preferences/com.apple.security*
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  249 14 Jan 00:57 /Library/Preferences/com.apple.security.appsandbox.plist
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel   71  7 Feb 10:58 /Library/Preferences/com.apple.security.plist
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  353 21 Nov  2021 /Library/Preferences/com.apple.security.systemidentities.plist

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How to disable smart card authentication on Ventura (on Apple Silicon)