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.

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

Same problem here. I have five Jabber accounts, and only one has this behavior. I'd like to blame the server, but I see the prompt for the password even before a single network packet goes out.

So before anyone tries these steps, here's what did NOT work for me:

• Removing the account and adding it again
• Disabling Keychain iCloud sync
• Adding the account in System Preferences vs Messages
• Removing the entry from the keychain

The odd thing is that for all other accounts, if I go in the Accounts preferences in Messages.app, and then click on the Account Information tab, I see the username, and for password, I see "••••••••." Bit off the problem account, it's blank.

If I go offline, I can edit that field. But if I click on another account and then come back to this one, it's blank again. Huh? Clearly a bug. The only thing I see different about this account is that is has a ".io" domain. I thought that was the problem, so I set up another Cloudfire server on another .io domain, and it worked perfectly. I set up another on a .us domain - same problem - won't save the password. I can't find any pattern.

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

Same. Updated to High Sierra a few days ago and then when I restarted my laptop yesterday, the issue started with messages. After spending 2 hours trying to get gchat working with messages again (wouldn't save the account, wouldn't log in, account would disappear, etc.) I finally got that going but any time my computer goes to sleep, I have to enter my gchat login 3-4 times for each of my signed in accounts before messages will remember it and let me log in again.

Same exact problem here. This is a major bug. How does Apple miss something like this? Every time my computer goes to sleep, it wakes back up with my Jabber account disconnected and prompts me for the password.

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.

Went thru the steps but sadly didn't fix the issue on High Sierra.

Still prompted me for the password when I restarted iChat (after entering in the password again post keychain deletion).

Also looked at the keychain again and now nothing from jabber is saved in there...

Same thing. I noticed that my passwords for my jabber account are missing from messages and internet accounts.r

I'm using messages for sms from android.

Does anyone have a recommendation for similar apps that are equal or better than messages and saves the password?

Thank you.

Well, I'm not sure about "better," but in terms of just remembering the darned password, I've had no problems with Adium. Personally, I have not found a theme which makes it not look like a System 7, Aqua, or Windows app. But in terms of functionality and stability, it's been brilliant.

If you mix iMessage and Jabber, however, using Adium means you'll need two apps of course, since only Messages.app supports iMessage.

For Android, check out Xabber or my favorite, kandruIM - both free, both work flawlessly for me. Xabber is more advanced, but has had trouble with some Cloudfire accounts. kandruIM has worked for everything. I have yet to find an iOS app that works even reasonably well.

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.

have had the same issue and just went so far as to totally reset messages' settings (deleting all plist files, cache, prefs, etc. in Library) and reset the google account and it still prompts me for password everytime.

please address this bug, Apple!

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.

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.

I just did this and did not work.

I'm not using gmail, but a jabber account to view my sms messages on android on imessage.

Do you know if it's possible to wipe my keychain entirely without losing all my files, apps, etc?