Keychain passwords missing...

Question

Level 1

19 points

Keychain passwords missing...

All of a sudden passwords items for few website logins are missing in my iCloud Keychain.

Recently, I had disabled iCloud keychain on my iPhone 7 only to enable it back. When I disabled the iCloud keychain, I chose to delete the login and passwords from my phone.

Immediately after this disable/enable activity, as a quick check on my iPhone I browsed through my Safari passwords to find login and passwords for a couple of websites I frequently visit were missing.

Thats when I opened my Macbook pro to see if the passwords were available in the keychain. The websites for which passwords were missing on my iPhone were autofilling on my Macbook. I thought my Macbook saved me. I closed the websites and when I came back to access the websites on my Macbook I am finding the websites dont remember the login and passwords anymore. However the auto fill function is working on other sites for which the passwords were not lost. Can somebody help me/guide me to understand what might be happening here?

- Why is my Macbook not able to fill the login and passwords that it was able to do in a previous web session?

- How can I restore my previous keychain (from the time immediately before my phones Keychain disable)? I was thinking, even if I disable iCloud keychain on my phone the password items would be on cloud and be available on other devices...I am a little worried.

Can somebody help me here?

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013), OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Jul 22, 2017 7:18 PM

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Answer 1

Jul 23, 2017 3:37 AM in response to nangli

If you have iCloud Keychain enabled, you may have passwords saved in either your iCloud Keychain or your local keychain. If you disable the iCloud Keychain it won't loses passwords saved in your local keychain.

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Answer 2

nangli Author

Level 1

19 points

Jul 23, 2017 9:16 AM in response to Winston Churchill

That's exactly what I was relying on when I disabled iCloud Keychain on my phone, thinking my MacBook would still have ALL the passwords...It seemed to be true for a short while, when I opened my MacBook to check if the passwords I had seen missing in my phone are available in MacBook or not. They were available in my MacBook, however I closed the browsing session and log back again to find that MacBook doesn't have it anymore...This was a wierd experience to me.

How do I access my Local keychain on my Mac? I have opened the Keychain access app and I find the Passwords which are now listing only those which are on the iCloud (which are still missing few passwords). When I go to the sites that my Macbook was autofilling the passwords for, shows the login and passwords as blank now...

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Answer 3

Eric Root

Level 10

684,189 points

Jul 23, 2017 9:53 AM in response to nangli

It sounds like the passwords were deleted somehow and that has synced to the computer. If it is only a few sites, try going to the web site and clicking forgot password.

If you have a backup such as Time Machine, quit Keychain Access, go to Finder and select your user/home folder. With that Finder window as the front window, either select Finder/View/Show View options or go command - J. When the View options opens, check ’Show Library Folder’. That should make your user library folder visible in your user/home folder. Select Library/Keychains. Enter your backup and restore that folder.

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Answer 4

nangli Author

Level 1

19 points

Jul 23, 2017 9:56 AM in response to Eric Root

Eric, I will have to try your approach. The only question I have is, after I restore the Keychain from the back up folder to make it current will the iCloud Keychain then be updated/reflecting the contents from the RESTORED folder???

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Answer 5

Eric Root

Level 10

684,189 points

Jul 23, 2017 10:45 AM in response to nangli

The keychain should then be the contents of the restored folder. Once the folder is restored, you might want to restart the computer to 'reset' things.

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