I just did a system restore onto a replacement MacBook laptop using Time Machine. I don't use Keychain, but I do use Safari to save many passwords to websites that I visit. I can manually restore passwords myself, but that would be rather slow and tedious.
Does Time Machine have the capability to backup passwords only from Safari without having to use Keychain?
David
MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015), OS X El Capitan (10.11.1)
If you save passwords in Safari, then you are using Keychain. You can see for yourself by using Keychain Access. Safari autofill data uses its own encryption key, which is tied to your login password.
Perhaps you are thinking about iCloud Keychain, which has to be explicitly enabled through System Preferences > iCloud.
Time Machine will back up your Keychain and no additional steps are necessary for it to do that. If you were to restore a system from its Time Machine backup, your Safari website passwords will be restored along with everything else.
Chrome had zero issues - imported just fine. Both Safari and Mail required manual password restoration. Lame.
That also seems plausible. All mine are encrypted.
Regarding the passwords, I only had a handful of non-critical ones saved in Safari. I manually entered them.
My support case with Apple regarding this issue got escalated to the engineering team. Sadly, I was told there is absolutely no way to transfer my passwords. Unless 1) I use iCloud or 2) had checked the encrypted check box in Time Machine.
Yeah, it makes sense that Time Machine will not move sensitive password data onto a non-encrypted directory. I am using encryption for the entire external disk - but Time Machine has no way of knowing that. I just wish there had been some type of message alerting me to this preventable problem at the time I created the backup. I am glad that I'm not being forced to use iCloud for passwords. I don't use iCloud and never plan to.
I did have an idea (workaround) - and brought this up to Apple a few times - but I'm not sure I was able to communicate that idea well enough or if Apple is aware that this idea wouldn't work.
I still have both machines. I can see every Safari password on the old machine (easy to see - just can't transfer). I could make another backup of the old machine using Time Machine with encryption turned on and then *somehow* import those passwords (and only those passwords) onto the new machine.
This seems plausible - but I'm a bit shy to try this myself without help.
Side note: While attempting to manually transfer the password files from the old machine to the new machine - I took note that it does appear that all of the password files were originally restored by Time Machine - onto the new machine. I don't know what that means though.
Time Machine: backup Safari passwords without using Keychain?
