All of my devices forget all wifi passwords about once a week

this problem started with ios 16.4. so the origin is ios, which is somehow corrupting the Keychain and spreading on to other macos devices that's signed on with the same apple id / iCloud account. there's even a reddit post about this issue while testing the prerelease: search reddit for "my apple devices forgetting wifi passwords". apple deleted my message with the reddit link.

here's an uneducated guess: i think it was ios 16.4 where apple introduced Bluetooth / wifi network password sharing to your contacts directly from the wifi settings- basically airdropping it to someone else's apple device that's obviously not signed on to your Keychain. that very well may be where the corruption is. it's basically an automatic action where the password is copied to your clipboard and sent to a different device - that action requires a 'new' access to your Keychain and that may very well be where the bug is.

I am having this issue also and it started when I added a new iPhone 15 and new Watch Ultra. I started getting prompted to reenter my Wi-Fi password on all my devices after they sleep or on my phone the screen shuts off. I have traced it down to an iCloud key chain issue. I spoke with support and they had me disable the keychain on all my devices and then force a new iCloud keychain creation. I did that.... Issue persists.... So I removed all devices and added them to my account again and forced a new iCloud keychain.... the issue persists. This has been going on since the release of the new iPhone. I am going insane and almost threw my phone. I have watched the entry disappear from the iCloud keychain from the Keychain manager on my Macs. Just poof.

The recommendations are extremely frustrating as I have a very large Apple environment so I have to spend like 8 hrs re-adding all my stuff and calling my CC companies to get my wallet set up again... I need a real solution and fix it asap as I am going mad. I just don't have to add my wifi I have to reenter stuff on other iCloud items.

I have the same problem. Iphone 8, ipad mini 4 and a mac mini late 2012 (10.15.7). i could solve the problem transitionally - i have disabled the icloud keychain function on my old mac mini! i think it is a problem with old devices/os systems an new one.

what worked for me was a suggestion from another thread

on every device so affected go into settings -- wifi-- and then - this is the key-

edit the list of networks and delete the network affected. (NOT forget this network - but full delete)

then restart device. then re log into the network with PW/

since doing this the automatic connection seems to work been a week or so

I haven't, but you're probably better off going to the Genius Bar. My experience with Applecare over the phone is getting people who follow cookie-cutter protocols that won't work and only fix basic stuff; mostly errors on the user end. With something like this, you might run into somebody who knows there stuff at the genius bar, and they can either help you or report to apple that something is causing some users to have a corrupt keychain account on the cloud, if that is the case. But it seems like not enough people have this problem for apple to address it. When I get the time, I'll go to the genius bar.

I've had that glitch occur when toggling settings as well. Closing all apps and rebooting the affected device tends to fix that glitch. As an aside, it's good practice to close all apps and reboot all your devices a couple times a week to allow the operating system to do behind the scenes cleanup. Keeps glitches to a minimum.

So after being extremely frustrated with losing wifi connection dozens of times yesterday I was ready to reset all settings on my phone but didn’t. I’m not sure if it was one thing or multiple things I did for it to stay connected, so far my phone has reconnected to my wifi successfully without me entering the password. Connect to your wifi, Turn off private relay, turn off private wifi address (to right of your wifi connection click the blue i), turn of limit ip address tracking, forget your wifi connection, restart phone. Connect to your wifi and re-enable everything we turn off except private relay.

Count me in.

Although mine seems to be a little different than eveyrone elses. I don't loose all passwords on all devices at the same time. Each device seems to be on it's own forgetting schedule, where it forgets after 3 to 7 days.

Also I do use iCloud Keychain which is supposed to sync preferred wifi networks and passwords. But on Macs, you can see the list of preferred networks and they are clearly not in sync at all. It's like something glitched and each mac/device keeps reverting back to it's own saved state without wifi passwords. You add them, they're good for a while, then they go away.

I've also been working with apple support on this issue but I got absolutely nowhere. Chat support sent me to phone support, phone support sent me to senior phone support, senior phone support won't send me to an engineer and keeps suggesting troubleshooting ideas that are not even remotely on the right track. I'm tempted to abandon my support ticket and start a new one from scratch.

I've experienced this problem on a 2012 mac mini, 2009 imac, iPhone 11, iPhone 7 plus, iphone 6s. The ONE computer that has never had an issue seems to be my primary Mac, a 2018 mini that stays on wifi and it's "Preferred Networks" list in system prefs is a mile long and contains everything.

I've tried turning iCloud Keychain off and on multiple times.

I've tried FULLY logging some of the machines out of iCloud, deleting all data, and then logging them back in.

It makes no difference at all. I'm at my house and my mothers house the most, and both networks constantly disappear from computers/phones.

Apple senior phone tech tried to suggest the problem was the wifi router at one point. Ironic since both routers on those two networks are genuine airport express base stations :D

This is *CLEARLY* an iCloud Keychain problem. Which means only Apple can fix it.

The things that have experienced this problem the most for me are my iPhone 11 with the newest iOS, and my MacBook Pro running Catalina.

So I think I'll turn off iCloud Keychain in the macbook pro for a while and see if it's able to start remembering my home network. At least it's something.

My problem started in May of this year after upgrading to iOS 6, and getting the paid iCloud 2TB account. I spent many hours with Apple tech support, who asked me to upload analytics data from my various IOS devices. It was a large project, requiring a fair bit of time. By the end of September, my problem seems to be gone. I also am in a large Apple ecosystem, with three MacBooks (High Sierra x 2 and Ventura x 1), five IOS devices (all now on the latest iOS 16), traveling between seven different sites between two countries. So basically, now in October, my devices are able to remember the Wi-Fi passwords. Hope this problem does not resurface. This is definitely an iCloud keychain issue. Apple tech support appears to need to work on the backend, possibly for each account that has this problem.

I'm having this same issue, and I turned off "Passwords and Keychain" in the iCloud settings on my iPhone. This appears to be working as a bandaid to prevent my iPhone from constantly disconnecting its WiFi connection. Recently, iOS 17.4 was released. Does anyone here know if iOS 17.4 fixed this issue?

I was actually having the same exact issue… what I ended up having to go and do, was forget the Wi-Fi for all of my devices that’s the main key…. you have to do it for all of your devices. Also I had to go into the network settings on each of my devices and delete those, once that has been done, you are able to go in and sign into your Wi-Fi with no issues.

More than just a “me too”, here are more symptoms.

1. It’s all Apple devices. macOS (multiple versions), and iOS (latest and just previous versions), Macs, iPads, iPhones. Windows devices are not affected.
2. Apple devices don’t just forget one WiFi password, they forget ALL of them, even if saved. I work from home plus several other locations regularly. Once this started happening, all devices require EVERY WiFi password EVERY TIME. It seems like one of Apple’s security updates blocked the ability to save WiFI passwords.
3. This started a month or two ago. Prior to that time, all Apple devices would auto-connect to saved WiFi APs with saved passwords.
4. At the risk of repetition, it’s ALL Apple devices, including Apple TV. But it’s only Apple devices. Any other device will auto-connect perfectly, any network, any time, every time. It’s therefore not a router issue at all.
5. This is a MAJOR pain. Many passwords are deliberately complex for added security.

… I suspect that the issue is linked to roaming activities , or connecting / disconnecting to a network.

I just left home with my phone, switching to 4g , and turned off my macbook computer (leaving it at home but off) , then coming back home, the phone had lost the wifi password and propagated this to the iCloud keychain, turning on the computer it had lost the wifi connection as well (deleted from keychain)

BUT an (old) ipad (Air 2 with ios 15.7.3) that I left at home and was not fully turned off but only « sleeping » didn t lose the wifi network connection. The still wifi connected ipad didn t propagate the wifi password to icloud keychain though (which is reaaaaally weird since this ipad is also part of my icloud and is sharing the keychain) but i was able to come close to it with my phone to share / grab the wifi password from it.