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

Dear Kherberos,

I echo the comments of Kotma.

I am a physician working in multiple clinics, using Electrionic Health Record in cloud storage for patient encounters, accessing through different WiFi networks at different urgent care clinics.

How would you like to see your doctor using a state-of-the-art Apple MAcBook, struggling to connect to WiFi, unable to see your EHR, or be disconnected in the midst of recording your clinical findings or in the midst sendig your eRx to the pharmacy?

I don't think you would consider that a very professional encounter, if your physician delays your visit, makes you wait a long time, trying to get something simple done, all because the WiFi keeps asking your physician for the password, and each clinic has a different IT person.

You should be sympathetic to all Apple end-users who are victims of this issue. Try to add something constructive to this discussion. Perhaps you can call Apple and add to our collective voice on this issue.

… I was obviously in the mood for some flaming (but respectful ! 😉) replies when I posted my message.

It never fails 🤣🤣

The point is another user in this thread already commented that Apple is well aware of the issue and is working on it.

Just be patient. Report your specific problem and surrounding events and let the engineers work.

If you think high of Apple, just have faith they will correct the issue.

Emotional outburst is not constructive in the engineering world.

Everyone one has their own idea on how long Apple should take to solve this (i.e. Immediately… lol) things are never that simple and there is a lot to do when an issue like this appears, from tracking the root cause, finding a solution that do not not break something else, many many hours of testing and quality control for final release. This is mighty complex.

… And indeed I wouldn’t be happy if my physician quickly brew himself my prescription from plants of his garden just because I scream for an immediate fix.

Let s argue (respectfully) more now ! 🤣🤣🤣

Do we know for sure that this actually is a problem apple is working on? Or are we just assuming apple "knows all"? Because I all but spelled out the problem to my senior support person and rather than saying "yes this is a known issue we're working on" he says "it sounds like a problem with the wifi network".

just upgraded to ios 16.6. maybe that will solve this. will see in a couple of days.

what upsets me is the radio silence from Apple. they should at least publicly acknowledge the issue and at least (if available) suggest an official workaround and / or some idea on how they will fix this. and an assurance that this is not a security vulnaribility. anything with passwords and keychain makes me nervous.

that's what apple used to do - acknowledge problems and let the users know what's going on. for the last year or two, they seem more focused on new emojis and other bells and whistles rather than problems with their core services.

instead, many users on this thread, and many i know personally, had to spend hours with clueless apple care operators who made them turn off and on their routers, asked them to contact their ISPs or system admins for network settings and such, wasting their times, instead of simply publicly acknowledging the problem and asking for our patience whilst demonstrating that they are working diligently on solving it.

anyway, enough venting - please keep posting this on social media - twitter (or X, whatever), linkedin, fb, instagram, tiktok, wherever. these days apple pays attention only if there's bad publicity. just twitted, or X'ed again. if ios 16.6 does not solve this, X'ing will not suffice - will probably have to XXX my feelings!

https://twitter.com/beskardes/status/1683727109800308737?s=46&t=WFAAG7qTByacuhpSsk4ewg

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.

This is actually very constructive info, thanks !

As for Apple communicating on the issue, I feel (only a personal feeling) that yes, they could do a better job in keeping some sort of “public board” with known potential issues.

Although I can also understand also why they wouldn’t want to.

For instance it is not immediately obvious if the issue is linked to a bug or to a hdw problem appearing after some software update. Also not clear if the issue is due to Apple applying established standard protocol (defined between companies i.e for data transfer in wifi) but with a mistake. Or if the standard protocol itself is the problem … in which case you need to start a round of discussion with all contributors of the protocol to request modification of the standard. Or if the issue is link to the Apple side or the router side, or if the issue is only on the Apple kernel layer of software.

So until responsibilities are clearly establish , it is difficult to communicate on the issue. Not impossible though …

I suspect the way it works is simply the “Me too” button , once the number is high enough, it triggers an alert at Apple and depending on the number, the issue (if any is found on Apple side) is assigned a priority and a request to communicate officially on it or not is sent to higher management.

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.

Yes frustration is high on this but you make a lot of assumptions which maybe misleading in solving the issue.

Beskardes makes a very good argument which seems technically sound … but it is still only conjecture.

Also assuming that apple knew since 4 months because of Reddit is just an assumption.

Think about it, what would you do if you were allowed to sit in the meeting room with all the Apple engineers discussing the issue and throwing back and forth argument or possible solutions ? Probably only showing that it will take time to solve … Would you yell at them ? What good would this do ?

I agree that communication on the issue is a must. We have the post of Carlos Perez2 indirectly giving some info on what apple is doing. Enough for me to wait a little more. Everyone sensibilities are obviously different.

On my side I am checking this thread to (happily) see the “Me Too” counter increasing … and having some fun (and respectful ! 😉) arguments. Until the issue is solved !

When there is a security issue, they are able to fix it really quickly. I am not from IT but the fact that they can fix security issues immediately makes me think that your argument that it takes months to fix this may not be that accurate. This is likely less of a security issue, and more of a convenience thing, but it still should get higher priority, especially since some of us are unable to log in at work.

Also, I agree with you asking for respectful discussion here. Full agreement. But then you said that some people reacted with flame to your arguments. Well, “the flame” started after you said that so many of us are “over reacting”, and we should be patiently waiting. We have have been, for months, but enough is enough. If Apple at least acknowledged that they are aware and working on it.

Respectfully, peace.

Remember that turning off "Passwords and Keychain" / "Keychain" in the iCloud settings on all of your devices will mitigate this issue until Apple fixes it.

The engineers are aware of the issue, this thread, and are working to find the bug and fix it. I know there is a lot of frustration.. I feel it too. A result of working with Apple on this is that I had to turn my keychain back on on all my devices in order to generate the necessary error logs the engineers need.

For the rest of you.. turn off "Passwords and Keychain" / "Keychain" in the iCloud settings to help preserve your sanity in the meantime.

I did disable Keychain in iCloud on my iPhone and iPad (running latest iOS/iPadOS), but not on my MacBook Pro running older macOS 10.15.7 about two weeks ago. I have not had any trouble since then, suggesting the issue might come form the latest updates of iOS/iPadOS.

Apple Support phoned me out of the blue today (in Australia!) to discuss this issue with me. The lady said they are aware of the problem and are calling as many people as possible on this thread to try and get to the bottom of it.

I’ve tried disabling keychain sync but it doesn’t work on neither off my devices (MacBook, iMac, iPad, IPhone) the toggle thinks for a few secs then goes back to enabled, I have tried what people said about resetting which didn’t work on any device.

im royally screwed and paying now 30% more for iCloud.

now considering moving all my photos to Amazon photos and cancelling.

Apple not even showing face around here is dismal.

Not sure why I suspect that Apple is undercover here saying engineers are working on it. Relax!

they haven’t shown official face because they know many folks here will go ape on them.

FFS I cannot even disable keychain as it gets re enabled on ALL MY DEVICES.

APPLE IF YOU ARE READING THIS!!! WE KNOW YOU ARE, GET IT SORTED!!!

I've also received a call from Apple seeking information about this issue. (I confirmed by calling Apple that it wasn't a scam, something everyone should probably do if they reach out to you.)

I'm suspecting the problem relates to older MacBooks and/or an older macOS because I don't think I've had the problem since I upgraded to a new MacBook (and Ventura) recently.

I suggest people on this thread who have some technical know-how and some time to help Apple run the problem down say so. I'm competent but not overly so.

Thank you to Apple for taking this issue seriously. I recently ran into similarly frustrating problems with some Google/Nest products. When I reached out to them, the experience was so bad that I am giving up on Google/Nest for good going forward. (Nest was good before Google ruined it.)