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

Apple has a well vetted process for any investigations. The don't chime in on discussion threads. They need specific information on devices, networks, operating systems, etc. so they have to connect 1-1 with customers who have the issue happening. I can confirm they are indeed on the case and connecting with real people who are having this issue because I'm one of them.

This bug is not simple. This won't be an easy one to uncover the root cause, as people have different devices involved, over different generations, running different operating systems and different home networks. The range of possible combinations of systems is immense. And those with the issue seem to be not huge in number, so even harder to find the pattern as to why this is happening on our devices while the majority of users have no issues.

I've been using Apple products for over 40 years (pre Macintosh). I've seen Apple support evolve over all those years. The fact that they are actively monitoring these community forums and diving in to investigate, considering the scale of the products produced and sold, is impressive and good to know it works. There's no need to be suspicious when they are actually working on the problem.

Ha. Nope, though I did work with a well known brand that is a close partner of Apple and I've worked on many products that use Apple technology to work with Apple ecosystems. So I've just seen inside workings through those periods. On a personal level I've had pretty solid support from Apple over all the years. Much better run than any other tech company - ever. Nothing is perfect given the insane complexity of dealing with all the Apple products being used, but the systems and people they have for pretty much everything is miles ahead of everyone else. I'm not a crazy fanboy - truly in a business, operations, and customer sense it's very impressive. It just takes time to sort these things.

I've read through all the posts.  This has been happening to me too, and started about the time everyone else has noticed it.  I have mainly been seeing it happen on my 2018 MacBook Air.  I don't think it's ever just dropped out while using it, only after it's gone to sleep or has been turned off, but far from every time.  I have not updated the MacOS because of software compatibility issues.  I'm using MacOS 10.14.6.  If there has ever been an update for Safari or a Security Update for this MacOS version I have installed it.

I also use a one year old iMac (Apple Silicone) that has the most recent MacOS fully updated.  I can't specifically recall having to reconnect to my wireless network which is connected but I get the internet from a direct ethernet cable connection to the modem.

One curious thing happened today which led me to finding this thread.  My iPhone 8 using the latest iOS wasn't connected to the internet.  I had just gone to use it after roaming away from my home network.  It wasn't connected when I went to use it, and this wasn't the first time for this device either.  This was a last straw for me having been typing in my network password so many times.  I went to google the problem.  When I woke my MacBook Air, it was connected, I got an alert asking me if I wanted to share my password with another device.  I acknowledged affirmative and right away my iPhone was connected to my network.  I wanted to make note of this because I don't think I saw this comment from anyone else and to me it indicates there is a tie-in with iCloud.

I know this is a thread that if there is a solution hopefully someone has shared that tip.  I was disappointed to get to end of the thread and not find a solution.  I have discovered it's not something imagined or unique to my network.  I also believe Apple does parse information from these threads and hopefully have realized this to be a real problem.  It seems to be wide spread and I couldn't pick out a single OS or age or type of hardware that is singled out.  It does seem to always comeback to keychain and the iCloud.  I won't speculate that these are the cause but they do seem to be related and probably to a most likely much deeper problem, thus the length of time it's taken Apple to fix it.

This also happened to me, and on some of the routers that are only used internally for an internal working network and not connected to an Internet it happened also. Five devices all at once all across all of its Wi-Fi connections. Also, it doesn’t allow me to share the Wi-Fi password or show it like it normally does. Definitely an Apple problem. No updates on Wi-Fi‘s.

This is 100% linked to iCloud keychain, as this only happens on Wi-Fi that all my devices have already accessed, such as my home network and relative's networks.

Something is corrupting iCloud Keychain and instead of doing error correction the data gets plain old deleted.

iPhone 13, running iOS 16.6

iPad Mini 4 running iPadOS 15.7.8

Mid 2012 15" Macbook Pro running 10.15.7.

All three have just decided to kick themselves off my home network for no reason for the second time in less than 48 hours just 2 minutes ago.

[Edited by Moderator]

I am having the same issue, but only between 3 devices that are always connected and on.

iPhone 12 pro max

iMac late 2013 21.5"

macbook pro 2012 15"

I have 2 more phones that sit around and are not connected or used all the time and 4 more macbooks that are on and off.

My iMac is a work system and has Synergy on it for KVM software over wifi. It will lose that bond as wifi is lost. I have to get my keyboard out and mouse to plug them in and re-enter the wifi password.

On my macbook pro 2012, I have software that fails its internet check and i have to re-enter the software keys to get it working again after connecting it to wifi.

This problem is trash and is really ruining the apple experience for me. I will chew through 15GB of phone data before i notice its not on wifi anymore because its not something i even think to check...

This is happening to me since updating my iphone (Mac still running nicely on High Sierra). Ever since the update, every few days my wifi passwords get wiped from both devices, despite being a preferred network. What is really confusing for me is that it clears not only the icloud saved password, but the system saved password as well.

Please don't tell me about signing in and out again. This is clearly a deeper rooted issue that you ought to figure out.

I keep checking this thread every few weeks in the hope that a reliable fix or workaround has been found. This is such a major inconvenience for something that “just worked” until some point earlier this year, especially when you use the same devices in three different locations in the course of an average week.

I have a MacBook Pro running Catalina, iPhone 11 Max Pro running 16.6, and an iPad 5th Gen running 16. All are signed in to the same iCloud account. They all forget wifi passwords if they are not connected to a particular network for a long-ish period. I haven't worked out exactly how long that period is, but in the case of my iPhone it's more than 12 hours and less than 48.

I've also noticed recently that if I put the MacBook to sleep overnight (manually) it forgets the password of the network it is still connected to. This does not happen after a restart or if it goes to sleep on its own, curiously.

If I enter a password on my phone first it will offer to share it with the MacBook when I go to connect that, but it refuses to do so for the iPad.

The fact that Apple devices still do not give an option to show the wifi password while entering it makes this terrible fault even worse. It's awfully tempting to change all these passwords to something super-simple that does not have to be entered with great care. Haven't succumbed to that yet.

I don't think this is the kind of problem where there is ever going to be a fix or workaround on our end. I suspect that its either a problem with apple's icloud software on their own server, that they can find and fix. OR it's something they broke with a software update, so the fix will be a security update for all macos and ios versions, hopefully going wayyyyyy back.

I have three MacBook Pros "MBP", two running High Sierra, one running Ventura. One of the High Sierra I carry with me to different work locations.

I have multiple iOS devices (iPhones, iPads, iPad Pro), and I carry two iPhone with me to different work locations. All my iOS devices are on the latest iOS (16.6)

I've been having this issue of the various devices forgetting WiFi password since about April or May 2023, around the time I upgraded my iCloud from the free 5G to the paying 2TB plan. But it could also have coincided with an iOS upgrade.

The issue has definitely nothing to do with my MacOS, since I didn't upgrade the MacOS at that time. Though I may have upgraded the Ventura; the High Sierra have been their latest versions.

Even when I don't move my MBP from site to site, after sleep or after restart, they will occasionally forget the password and I have to re-enter the WiFi password.

When I go to my my habitual work or home locations (I am a physician working at 5 different clinic locations), the MBP and the iPhones I carry with me will forget WiFi passwords, such I have to re-enter the password on each device before I can log into the clinic WiFi network. I need to connect to the clinics' network to use their network resources. Since each clinic has their own unique password, it can be quite frustrating.

Since Aug 1, Apple has reached out to me weekly, and I've helped them collect Analytics information from my iOS devices at the different sites - Analytics at the time the WiFi password was forgotten, and Analytics after the WiFi connects. I've sent them over 70 files (screenshots and Analytics) - totalling gigabytes of data. It's been a fairly time consuming process.

If any of you get contacted by Apple, try to collect data to submit to them. It's definitely an iCloud keychain problem, and they need to get to the bottom of this. What is seemingly an annoying problem now, could snowball into something bigger. Let's hope this issue is resolved ASAP.

Earlier this year? I had this issue with a Catalina iMac, iphone6, iPhone12, iPad Air3 and MacBook Air M2 all with the same ID. My memory isn't the greatest but I remember going through the iCloud and password security panels on each device and comparing them. I noticed that the panels didn't have the same features on each device and being a nurd programmer who knows about revisions, went through every iCloud and security setting on each computer looking for things to turn off and on, resyncing and rebooting with all the devices logged into iCloud.

If I recall doing this to one of them, don't remember which one, permanently effected the panels it could show. I didn't think much of it at the time but haven't had the problem since. I've been meaning to post about this for awhile but keep thinking Apple will figure it out. Maybe this will help.

An additional piece of information here I believe.

I have this issue since several months. Like many I also shared with Apple support my experience. So they are working on it.

A few days ago I was getting back home and my phone switched from 4G to my home wifi … no issue there. Then a few moments later I noticed that my ipad was not connecting to wifi, so the issue with the icloud password was happening.

Since my phone was still connected to the wifi I tried to share the wifi password with ipad (tapping close to ipad) Strangely enough, it never worked although my phone was connected to wifi.

In the end, I tried to deactivated and reactivate the wifi on my phone and this didn t work. As soon as I deactivated the wifi on my phone, it could never reconnect until I re entered the password !! And then sharing with my ipad worked as well.

So what I conclude is that loosing the password can happen any time … even when you are connected, but it doesn’t mean you will be disconnected.

I think when the wifi connection is established the encrypted key (the token) is kept whatever happens to the actual password. Probably the reason I couldn’t share my password at the beginning is that although I had a connection token on my phone, the password was gone already so nothing to share. Strange behavior…

Just got back to my London home after nine days away and all three of my devices – MacBook, iPhone and iPad – have reconnected to the wifi without asking me for the password. First time this has happened in at least six months.

Anyone else finding the problem has gone away?

Three posts back I reported that my devices had remembered the wifi password after nine days away from my home in London. Well, last night I travelled to my base in France and all three had forgotten the password here. In this case it's 17 days since they last connected.

I am having same issue, started in recent weeks / month or so. It affects two different locations (200 miles apart) and 4 different routers, so it must be a fault with Apple devices, not the routers/network.