keychain not working after El Capitan

SmoothMouse was causing my inability to click Allow.

I had the same problem but if you follow this procedure you should then find everything will be restored on your Keychains

Select Finder (top left) by the Apple icon and then Navigate to GO whilst Depressing ALT on keyboard at the same time.

This should then open into LIBRARY folder.

Drag the Keychains folder onto the desktop.

Then Re-Boot

All should then be restored.

I suffered with this problem with two machines and found it immensely frustrating. I tried a clean reinstall and Time Machine backup, neither worked. In case it helps anyone else, I tracked this down to a rogue app: BetterSnapTool.

What I did:

• Go to ~/Library/Keychains
• Delete everything in the directory
• Go to System Preferences->Security and Privacy->Accessibility and disable everything to do with BetterSnapTool
• Delete BetterSnapTool from Applications
• Restart

Everything was fine after that.

I have to update this as I have tracked my particular problem down to the exact bit of software causing the issue. For me it was Junos Pulse 5.0. Everything works as expect after the above steps until I launch Junos Pulse then, as if by magic, Junos Pulse hangs trying to connect and I get pop-up after pop-up of applications needing to access the keychain and needing passwords. A reboot solves the issue until you try to use Junos Pulse again.

I haven't found a fix for this, instead I went with a workaround. I deleted the Junos entry from /Library/LaunchAgents, deleted Junos Pulse from Applications, and now use VirtualBox with Ubuntu whenever I need to access the VPN. Crazy but works for me.

Can't thank you enough - I constantly jump in and out of my keychain for passwords etc (no idea if this is a good method) so was pretty hacked off after doing the Craptin upgrade 🙂 Seems like a very abstract connection do you know what it is ?

Problems here with Keychain too, this time in connection with Xcode and signing apps:

Suddenly in Xcode I cannot select my ID "Mac Developer (somename) {somenumber}” anymore as a Code Signing Identity for my project. I immediately checked my Keychain and the private and public key and the certificate for this ID are nowhere to find anymore.

I think here is the thing and a very strange thing I noticed in the Keychain: When I for example select “System” and then “Certificates” without putting a search term in the search box I only get to see 7 certificates. Now here is the funny part: as soon a type one letter, for example “d”, then I get a much longer list. That doesn’t seem to be logical to me. Maybe this symptom is a caused by some problem in the Keychain which also affects Xcode and his abbility to see what Code Signing Identities are available. I tried to find my Mac Developer private and public key this way, by putting down a letter in the search box, but so far nowhere to find, no wonder Xcode cannot find it either. I think there is something wrong with the Keychain.app.

I'm chocked that Magic Prefs was interfering with keychain!

It's not that Magic Prefs interferes with Keychain, it's that Magic Prefs is software that is capable of interacting with mouse movements. In so doing, OS X's security features see that as a potential risk, because the software could theoretically move the mouse cursor without your knowledge and click the "accept" button for security items that you aren't approving. So OS X blocks the ability to click those buttons when Magic Prefs is installed. You simply need to add Magic Prefs to the allowed accessibility applications to tell OS X that it's a trustworthy program.

That is a great explanation. Thank you @sjpye, I've never thought that it could be the cause.

Thank you.

Maybe I did't make the procédure clear enough so I shall repeat it again for those having El Capitan Keychains issues:

Depress the ctrl key once so that you are seeing :

(black Apple Logo) - Finder - File - Edit – View – Go – Window – Help

Navigate to Go whilst depressing alt which then shows the file: Library

Which then shows a Keychains folder in the stack.

Drag that folder onto the desktop and reboot.

This then creates a new virgin Keychains folder which should resolve your problems.

Thanks sjpye 🙂 yep this checked out for me, nice to know the true cause.

Nope, didn't work for me. Tried several times with two different machines. The only thing that has worked for me, consistently now, was not using Junos Pulse. I know that not everyone having this issue is using Junos so I guess it is something that this particular application is triggering rather than the app itself.

JamieBennet... Since there appears to be a consistency of the issue with applications that have any kind of input monitoring or input control between hardware and OS (in other words, anything that deals with mouse input, keyboard input, or anything similar), it's possible that Junos Pulse has a security feature built into it that protects against automated keyboard entry for its VPN logins. If it's using an Apple API call that does that, it might be triggering OS X's security block, just like the other apps like MagicPrefs. I use Junos Pulse myself for our company VPN, but I specifically have Junos added to my permitted accessibility apps, so I have no issues. You might wish to try going to System Prefs > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility, and then adding the Pulse software to the list of apps that can control your computer.

Also, something else that I do with Pulse, is that I only ever run the app when I'm connecting, and exit when I'm disconnecting, rather than leaving the app in the notification area all the time. Pressing Command+Space and typing "pulse" and hitting enter is not much slower for me than clicking it in the menu bar. Of course, if you're a remote worker and must have Pulse running all day, that could get annoying. Also, are you using the latest version of Pulse? There was a pretty significant update a couple of months ago. Maybe that will help. Anyway, hopefully the above tip will work for you.

Well, turns out my keychain issues are caused by my Wacom tablet tablet drivers grrrrr!!! I have installed the latest driver but still have the same issues. As soon as I disable the drivers then my keychain works perfectly and as expected. At least now I FINALLY have figured out what the issue was 🙂

Ok, I had to uninstall SmoothMouse and reboot, that fixed the problem.

I understand that this is a new security feature in El Capitan (the pointing device is not considered trustworthy by the OS), but the implementation seems kinda half-baked/unfinished to me. Instead of simply not registering the mouse click (driving the user mad) some kind of security alert should be shown explaining the situation clearly!