Why won't High Sierra save Jabber account passwords to keychain?

SOLUTION

After running a comparison with a working version (on Sierra 10.12.6) it looks like the solution (at least for me) is to change the Where value that gets generated on sign in from what gets populated when adding an account in High Sierra com.apple.account.jabber.password to Jabber

In order to make this change follow these steps:

1. Open Keychain Access
2. Search for com.apple.account.jabber.password
3. Double click it to open the attributes prompt
4. In the Where field (fourth one down) you should see com.apple.account.jabber.password
5. Replace all text in that field with Jabber
6. Click Save Changes

After making this change the first launch of messages asked me to allow permission to access keychain. After doing so any subsequent open of messages works as expected.

I hope this helps.

This worked for me too! Thank god, this bug was the worst.

I changed both the 'Where' field to just 'Jabber' and changed the lowercase jabber in the name to uppercase:

So now the attributes are:

Name: com.apple.account.Jabber.password

Kind: application password

Account: myemail@gmail.com

Where: Jabber

When I first went to try this, there was no entry at all when I searched the keychain for 'jabber.' I fixed this by deleting the messages account entry in 'Internet Accounts' for this account and recreating it. Then a com.apple.account.jabber.password key appeared and I made the above changes. Now its working both for a normal gmail and an institutional account on my MacBook Pro.

Thank you, but this is only a part of the solution (in my case, but I think others will run into the same issues).

For everyone who couldn't solve the problem with the solution above, try the following steps:

1. Open Keychain Access
2. Search for com.apple.account.jabber.password (or just Jabber)
3. Double click it to open the attributes prompt
4. In the Name field (first one down) delete the current value and enter "Jabber: user@domain.xyz"
5. In the Account field (third one down) delete the current value and enter "user@domain.xyz"
6. In the Where field (fourth one down) delete the current value and enter "Jabber"
7. Click Save Changes

I guess I don't have to mention that user@domain.xyz is a placeholder for the actual account.

Also don't type any quotation marks.

Hope this helps!

Kind regards

Nils

I've been through the 3 pages of this discussion and tried everything listed. Still lost my password every time the computer went to sleep. Here's the setup that seems to be working for me:

Name: com.apple.account.jabber.password (both lowercase and uppercase J worked)

Kind: application password

Account: my email address@talk.google.com. (I deleted the @talk.google.com)

Where: Jabber (capital J)

In the Access Control tab, I only have "Confirm before allowing access" selected. After I relaunched Messages, I was asked for my talk.google password or my keychain login password (can't remember which) and checked the box for "Always allow...". This made "imagent" appear in the Access Control tab under "Always allow access by these applications". Up until this point I had not seen anything in that box.

Following up on my earlier post, I appear to have fixed the problem on my system. I observed that on another Mac (running Yosemite) that I started having the same problem - iChat repeatedly asking for my password. That made me think this was something related to my keychain in iCloud. I ran keychain access and noticed there were two entries for com.apple.jabber.accountsync, one of which had an incorrect string for the account name.

Entry 1 (incorrect, note the double @)

Account: first.last@company.com@servername.company.com

Entry 2

Account: first.last@company.com

To fix:

1. Close iChat

2. Run Keychain Access

3. Search: jabber

4. Check the "account field" on entries that are listed. Delete Keychain entry that has the incorrect account field.

5. Close Keychain Access

6. Restart iChat

7. When prompted entered your password and check 'remember in my keychain'.

After that you should be all set. Least that fixed the problem for me. I think there's a bug somewhere in High Sierra that screws up Keychain Entries for Jabber accounts when the OS is installed. Note, I did the above procedure from my Yosemite mac. It's entirely possibly that the above procedure may not work if you preform it from a Mac running High Sierra as the OS may just stuff back an incorrect entry.

You may want to try going into System Preferences > Internet Accounts and removing the Gmail accounts that use Messages. Once you do that you can open up the messages app and add the account back by either opening preferences and going to accounts OR clicking add jabber account. Once you add it, you should see the new password addition to the keychain which will have the incorrect "where". Update that and you should no longer be asked for your password on open.

The solution provided by @SteveZz87 worked for me. I use a Jabber account with a specific server, so I had to tweak it a little more.

Below details composed my keychain at first:

Name: com.apple.account.jabber.password

Kind: application password

Account: email@company.com@server.com

Where: com.apple.account.jabber.password

Then I updated it with below details:

Name: com.apple.account.Jabber.password

Kind: application password

Account: email@company.com

Where: Jabber

Then I restart Messages, and after asking me twice for my keychain password, it worked. We tried the same trick with a friend, but he was unable to change the "Where" value to "Jabber". We searched for all items with the keyword "Jabber" (found 5) and deleted all of them until we ended up with just one with the above update, it worked.

Thanks. It helped me.

Please, emphasis on step 4 that "Jabber" works but "jabber" doesn't.

Some thoughts:

1. You may want to delete both keychains that were created by adding the account and try once more and then follow the steps above to repair it.

2. One thing I had to do when my login was behaving strangely (signing me in but always showing connecting) was to go in and generate a new app password. It seemed like using the password I use to login to gmail was causing issues. Maybe worth giving that a shot.

If the solution by SteveZz87 does not work, try also after step 4

4a. Check the account name: in my case it was written:

username@jabber.someserver.com@jabber.someserver.com

I have corrected it to real username:

username@jabber.someserver.com

And it worked.

Hi !

Its issue with keychain , open keychain access with the help of spotlight , press command and comma to open its preferences click on reset my default keychain .see these articles If you need to update your keychain password on Mac - Apple Support

Messages for Mac: Set up other Internet accounts in Messages

Actually, just got it to work. I switched "jabber" to "Jabber" after walking through the steps.

Thank you for your help here!

I also needed to correct the account and change it to XXXXX@gmail.com (it had xxxxx@gmail.com@xxxxxxxxx).

Then, Under "Access Control" tab - check [Allow all applications...] - It no longer asks for my password on launch, and auto launches g-chat (hangouts)

For whatever reason I did not have "com.apple.account.jabber.password" in my keychain, so I just added it manually. Now it works.

mr.maximas wrote:

Adium is another superfluous entity! We talk about problem with jabber client in messages.app, not about another jabber clients.

Thank You.

I don't disagree with you, but it's hardly the first time users have had to bail on a native Apple app to find something that actually works. Just off the top of my head, I've had to:

Switch to Adium (for XMPP) as response to malfunctioning Messages

Switch to Google's GMail app (iOS) to deal with errors in Mail

Switch to Chrome to deal with standards incompatibilities, crashes, and bookmark syncing problems in Safari

Switch to Google Docs to deal with crashes and major functionality downgrades in Pages

Switch to Downcast (podcast ios app) because Apple destroyed their own podcast app to the point of being unusable

Switch to a peer-to-peer app for media downloads due to iTunes freezing and frequently inaccessible iTunes store.

Honestly, the only native Apple apps worth using are Calculator, Dictionary, and until now, Messages. I still need Messages for chat with other iPhone users but if you're going to use XMPP, Adium is going to be a must-have as a workaround for this password glitch.