iCloud keychain stuck on "waiting for approval from another device"

I Just fixed it for a customer's Phone. What I did was have her log into icloud.com, clicked on settings, manage account. That brought us to apple.com. Signed in there then went to account, clicked edit on the right side, then turned OFF Two-Factor Verification. (which prompted her to make new or redo her security questions) After that we went back to the phone, it had her type in her apple id password a few times then tried to do the approval and it worked.

I'm having this exact same problem on my Mac Pro. I've signed out of iCloud, and then signed back in, and the same thing happens. Apple sends the code to my phone, I enter it on my mac, it spins a bit and then says "Waiting for approval from other device."

This worked for me. I can't take credit, I found this on another site.

1. Turn off iCloud Keychain if it’s on on all of your devices.
2. From one of your iOS devices, go to Keychain and tap Approve with Security Code.
3. When prompted for the 4-digit iCloud Security code tap Forgot Code.
4. Follow the prompts to reset the code (the easiest thing is to use the same code that you use for the device you’re on).
5. Now this device should have iCloud Keychain enabled and working.
6. Now from your other devices, enable iCloud Keychain.
7. You should get a notification on the working device about this.
8. Enter your iCloud password in the prompt.
9. iCloud Keychain should now be enabled on this device.
10. Repeat for your other devices.

Hope this helps!

I don't have a "forgot login" either. This is ridiculous! I have been trying to switch my Apple ID to a new iPad and sign my son's Apple ID into my old iPad for 2 days now! It's impossible! Ugh!

Thank you, mate, don't know what I would do without you, have spent literally like couple weeks trying to figure this issue out between iOS 9 beta and El Capitan beta, seems like only your solution helped. Thanks a lot!

I had this exact problem that was beyond frustrating because all the forums I searched and tried did not solve my issue. Turns out the problem was local and I finally figured out what to do so if anyone reading this is experiencing this same message, try this:

1. Go to finder window

2. At the very top where the menu is, click on 'Go'

3. Hold the 'option' key and a 'Library' should suddenly appear in the dropdown list. Click it.

4. Navigate to the folder called 'Keychain'

5. Drag and drop it to desktop

6. Restart

7. After reboot, it may or may not ask you first thing to enter your appleID password. Enter it.

8. Now go to Systems Preferences > iCloud

9. You should now see that Keychain is no longer checked, and you should be able to then trash the folder on your desktop

Be aware that doing this does mean you will lose your saved passwords and/or credit cards stored, but there aren't any other options (at least that I came across) to resolve this issue anyway. In my case, I was so frustrated with the approval messages popping up on my other devices and keychain being stuck in the pending state, that I gladly was willing to start over.

Many Many thanks, I have this problem for months which started after I created a new user account on my iMac. I tried everything I could find on the web (a lot of different things is). After following your instruction everything just magically start working fine. Awesome

Thanks for this. It's an annoying bug - I've requested Apple fix this via both their feedback page and other avenues I have access to. However, as near as I can tell, Apple simply no longer care about fixing the little things. Sigh, bring back the good old days...

I just encountered this maddening problem. I was following advice on how to get new contacts entered on my iPhone to sync to my MacBook Pro. Suggestion: sign out of iCloud and sign in again. Oh simple! NO! once I'd signed out from the MacBook I had to go through full authentication as though the MacBook was a new device to iCloud, and just as above, typed in the code from the iPhone and was still asked for authentication from another device, which never appeared.

The iPhone wouldn't allow me to switch off the keychain.

1. I followed part of delgado258 's advice, below, and opened the library > Keychains folder. There were a couple of keychains that had dates way in the past so I moved them to the trash.

2. I closed System Preferences and re-opened it, went to iCloud again and tried to sign in.

3. This time, Settings > iPhone still open on my iPhone. Behold, a box pops up on it asking me to approve a "new" device on iCloud - even though my MacBook had been signed in only 30 minutes earlier, before all this.

All I use iCloud for is Find my ... and Contacts. New Contacts input on my iPhone still won't appear on the MacBook (although I think ones added on other Macs do). I'm going to move to using Google, this is simply a ridiculous waste of time. I wouldn't dream of using iCloud for anything else.

I can't log out iCloud because I can't turn off Keychain, Keychain stuck like this as well... any help?

I had the exact same problem and this solved it for me. Thanks for posting!!

worked for me many thanks

Thanks for the info....after hours of trying to set up keychain I came across your post. Worked right away. Thanks !

I'm having the exact same issue. Please help, thank you!

Sorry, my issue is solved. Thank you!