I have 116 keychains. Can I delete some to save space?

Question

Level 1

6 points

I have 116 keychains. Can I delete some to save space?

Hi,

My Macbook has run out of space and I notice that my keychains are taking up 3.22GB of storage.

I seem to have 116 keychains so I am wondering if I can delete some? Some are expired.

I don't really understand keychains. Is a separate one created for every separate thing you want to access? Or is everything stored in just one keychain, so I only need the latest one, not 116?

3.22GB seems an awful lot of storage.

Thanks

Sarah

MacBook, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5), White MacBook Laptop

Posted on Feb 8, 2016 5:51 PM

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Answer 1

Eric Root

Level 10

684,039 points

Feb 9, 2016 9:43 AM in response to Sazza

You should only need the latest ones. There is a login keychain and a metadata keychain. Make sure you back up before deleting anything.

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Answer 2

Feb 9, 2016 11:04 AM in response to Sazza

First, have a complete backup of your system via Time Machine or some other tool. Do not delete anything without complete and current backups. The backups are how your data can be recovered, after an errant deletion, storage failure, loss or damage or theft of the computer, etc.

Then, yes, user keychains can be deleted. Those contain your own passwords, notes, certificates and related.

Keychains don't expire.

There's no reason to have more than a keychain or two in each user's own login directory area. Some folks do create extras for specific tasks.

But unless new keychains are being created (100+ times), or there's some rather weird (and broken) software active, this situation should not arise.

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Answer 3

Drew Reece

Level 6

10,660 points

Feb 9, 2016 11:33 AM in response to Sazza

Before you start deleting you may want to show us where you are seeing these items. Do you have a file path or a screenshot of where these are located?

I wonder if you are confusing something else or if it is items from a third party app, 116 keychains and 3.22GB sounds like an awful lot of space, something odd may be going on with this Mac.

Keychains are normally a few MB at most, are there any dialogs that are related to the keychain when you use the Mac?

Please open /Applications/Utilities/Keychain Access - that will display your OS X keychains in your user account - does that list the 116 keychains too?

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