Keychain passwords disappeared

Question

Level 1

47 points

Keychain passwords disappeared

I use an iPhone, a Mac Book Pro, and an iMac. Keychain is on for all of them and I did not have any problem so far. Today I logged in my iMac and my apps complain that they cannot find the password. So I went to keychain and realised that all the passwords kept there dissappared. Then I go to my iPhone and there I see that the passwords are there. I searched the communities a little and a couple of suggest that turning off and on the keychain on their iPhone helped. I have several questions:

1. Why am I having this problem?

2. Why turning off and on keychain on iPhone would help?

3. If I turn off keychain on my iPhone, is there a possibility to loose all my passwords? Where are the passwords actually kept? On iCloud, I do not see a keychain app or something.

4. What are possible other solutions?

Any swift response would be very much appreciated.

iMac, macOS Sierra (10.12.1)

Posted on Nov 16, 2017 3:55 AM

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Answer 1

Eric Root

Level 10

684,027 points

Nov 16, 2017 5:59 AM in response to Pitiger

Does the MacBook Pro have keychain passwords? If so, that isolates the problem to the iMac.

1, The problem may be cause by a corrupt file on the iMac.

2. If the MacBook Pro has passwords, I would turn off/on the keychain on the iMac. The reason it might help is because that causes the keychain to sync again.

3. There is always the possibility of loosing data. That is why backups are important. The passwords are kept in files on the device/computers. You can't see the data at iCloud.com.

4. Restore the iMac from a backup made prior to the problem appearing.

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Answer 2

Pitiger Author

Level 1

47 points

Nov 16, 2017 6:19 AM in response to Eric Root

MB Pro has the same keychain passwords as keychain synchronises across all devices (or I ask it to do: I am not so clear what you mean here).

1. Why the file might get corrupt? This should not be easy. Otherwise everyone will loose all passwords and hence what is the point of keychain then?

2. I did this, and did not help.

3. So if keychain becomes corrupt, does that mean that I lose all the passwords, and that they cannot be retrieved from iCloud?

4. Thanks for the suggestion, but no I cannot do this. This sounds like a Microsoft solution. If something does not work, make a full recovery. Why? I am not supposed to be a snail to walk on a razor, expecting a crash one or the other day and to recover the whole system.

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