MacBook Air Stuck in Login > Unlock Mac Disk Loop

What is the exact model of this laptop? You can get this information by entering the system serial number on the check coverage page here:

Check Your Service and Support Coverage - Apple Support

How are you booting this Mac? Try Option Booting this laptop and selecting the macOS boot volume on the Apple Boot picker menu to be sure you are booting into macOS.

Otherwise you can try booting into Recovery Mode (Command + R) or Internet Recovery Mode (Command + Option + R) so you can try running Disk Utility First Aid on the hidden Container. Within Disk Utility you may need to click "View" and select "Show All Devices" before the hidden Container appears on the left pane of Disk Utility. Even if First Aid says everything is "Ok", click "Show Details" and scroll back through the report to see if any unfixed errors are listed. If there are still errors, then run First Aid again until they are fixed, otherwise you will need to erase the whole Volume Group followed by reinstalling macOS & restoring from a backup.

I hope you have a good backup since you may need to erase the laptop & start over to resolve the issue. If you don't have a backup, then you can try to recover data by either booting from a macOS external boot drive (will need to modify the laptop's security settings using Startup Security Utility...you can install macOS to an external USB3 SSD using Recovery Mode), or by putting this laptop into Target Disk Mode to attempt to access the data from another Mac using a Thunderbolt connection.

coder_gage wrote:

I can't reinstall MacOS because I don't have enough room, as I can't delete things for space.

I said you may need to install macOS to an external USB3 SSD to attempt to access & recover any data that was not backed up. Being able to navigate within a full version of macOS while booted to an external drive may help you to figure out what is going on with the internal macOS boot drive.

Reinstalling macOS to the internal drive is not advisable since it won't fix anything with the newer versions of macOS which reside on a read-only signed & sealed system volume. It may also cause more problems since we cannot be sure what is going on this your internal macOS drive especially if you need to recover data.

Thanks HWTech for your support. After first aid in disk utility kept bringing up the same errors, a clean install of MacOS from recovery mode did resolve the issue, and i can log in to the encrypted volume again. No more errors from first aid anymore.

its.me wrote:

Has this one ever be solved? I am having the same issue without bootcamp, but using 2 volumes on the same SDD, one encrypted, one unencrypted. Today, when trying to boot the encrypted volume i was getting the screen to unlock the encrypted disk, after entering the password i am also running into this loop where my macbook pro 13inch from 2018 keeps asking login password and password to unlock disk alternatingly...... Any ideas?

Did you try the suggestions I provided to the OP in this thread? If so, what happened?

Are you able to boot into the unencrypted volume? Can yo unlock the encrypted volume to access its data?

Do you have a good backup of both the encrypted volume and the unencrypted volume? If not, then I highly recommend you get a good backup of the data before doing anything else.....even if you have to manually transfer files from the encrypted volume while booted from the unencrypted volume. Make sure to store the backup on external media.

For both you and the OP, if my other suggestions do not help to boot into main volume, then you can try a DFU firmware Revive which resets the T2 security chip & system firmware. While this normally will not destroy any data, if there is a hardware issue, then it may leave the laptop in a more broken state.

How to revive or restore Mac firmware - Apple Support

That is an option if you are trying to recover data from the internal SSD if you don't have a good backup.

If you do not care about the data on the internal SSD, then you can try erasing the disk & install macOS on the internal SSD followed by restoring from a backup. All depends on your exact situation here & your goal (including time & money). Depending on the issue, you may still end up needing to do this nuclear option especially if you are using a 2018+ Mac.

Don't forget to post the exact model of your laptop since it does make a difference for some things. The version of macOS may also be needed as well.

Has this one ever be solved? I am having the same issue without bootcamp, but using 2 volumes on the same SDD, one encrypted, one unencrypted. Today, when trying to boot the encrypted volume i was getting the screen to unlock the encrypted disk, after entering the password i am also running into this loop where my macbook pro 13inch from 2018 keeps asking login password and password to unlock disk alternatingly...... Any ideas?

Thanks for help,

i did the first aid in recovery mode and here is some of the errors that keep popping up in athe details, despite i am getting positive after each time first aid runs:

Hide Details

Checking snapshot 1 of 10

(com.apple.TimeMachine.2024-03-25-180537.local, transaction ID 17924566)

warning: inode (id 17254223): Resource Fork attr is missing for compressed file

warning: snapshot fsroot / file key rolling / doc-id tree corruptions are not repaired; they'll go away once the snapshot is deleted

Checking snapshot 2 of 10

(com.apple.TimeMachine.2024-03-25-193456.local, transaction ID 17925547)

warning: inode (id 17254223): Resource Fork attr is missing for compressed file

Verifying volume object map space.

The volume /dev/risk37 with UUID 8259B24D-9914-4430-AB73-C392FBOB68B9 was found to be corrupt and needs to be repaired.

Verifying allocated space.

Performing deferred repairs.

The volume /dev/rdisk37 with UUID 8259B24D-9914-4430-AB73-C392FBOB689 appears to be OK.

File system check exit code is 0.

Restoring the original state found as mounted.

Keep getting the same also after unmounting/mounting and running again. Btw. I do not understand the timemachine snapshot error as i am not using time machine for this volume….

any ideas?

To unlock the disk, you must enter the backup password you created when you turned on encryption for the disk.