SOLVED: Touch ID unlocks Mac, but Safari History, Find My widget, and Spotlight stay empty/locked after a Backup Restore

The Problem:

If you recently restored your Mac from a backup disk or migrated your data, you might encounter a frustrating bug where unlocking your Mac with Touch ID works to get you past the lock screen, but leaves secure background data vaults completely locked.

Symptoms include:

• The Find My "People" widget displays no data or stops working.
• Safari Personal History / Spotlight clipboard features fail to load.
• Secure panes in System Settings (like Spotlight preferences) hang or don't populate.
• Crucial Tell: Logging in or waking the Mac with your password fixes everything instantly, but waking it with Touch ID breaks it again.

The Cause:

When you restore from a backup, your files copy over perfectly, but the low-level cryptographic link between your restored Local Items keychain vault and the physical Secure Enclave Processor (SEP) chip inside the Mac is broken. Typing your password utilizes software-level key derivation to force the vaults open, but Touch ID passes a biometric hardware token that the legacy, restored folder doesn't recognize.

The Fix (Step-by-Step):

You can fix this by forcing macOS to isolate the legacy hardware-bound container and generate a fresh one natively paired to your current Secure Enclave configuration.

• Open Terminal (Finder > Applications > Utilities > Terminal).
• Move into your Keychains directory by running:

cd ~/Library/Keychains/

ls -la

• Look for a folder named with a long, unique combination of numbers and dashes (a UUID folder string, such as 838327D5-XXXX-XXXX...).
• Move that specific folder to your Desktop as a backup to isolate it out of the system path (replace the placeholder text below with your actual folder name):

mv ~/Library/Keychains/[YOUR_UUID_FOLDER_NAME] ~/Desktop/

• Force-flush the security daemons:

sudo killall -9 localauthd securityd

• Restart your Mac immediately.
• Log back in using your password on initial boot. This forces macOS to automatically generate a brand-new, completely healthy version of that UUID folder natively signed by your current hardware.
• Go to System Settings > Touch ID & Password, re-enroll your fingerprints, and give iCloud a few minutes to silently sync your passwords and secure tokens back down to the fresh vault.

Your Touch ID unlocks will now fully populate your widgets, Safari history, and system extensions exactly like a password login does. Once you confirm it works, you can delete the old folder off your Desktop.