Wallet & Apple Pay Preference Missing

For ease of reading the problem can be identified by opening the Terminal app and pasting in the following command:

Code:

defaults read .GlobalPreferences PKSecureElementAvailableFlags

If Terminal responds with:

Code:

1

rather than the correct value of:

Code:

3

Then the fault is with this flag value and the following command should be pasted into Terminal:

Code:

defaults write .GlobalPreferences PKSecureElementAvailableFlags -int 3

You can check this value again by repeating:

Code:

defaults read .GlobalPreferences PKSecureElementAvailableFlags

The Wallet appeared in the System Preferences pane immediately after this command but it took me a restart to get it to accept a new card (a log out/in may have also worked).

Full credit to Einkoro, mjrit and a few others.

This is the last thing I did - and it worked. Not sure if any of the previous 5-6 hours of deleting caches and .plists had anything to do with it, but somebody give this a try:

• Created new user and verified that the Wallet icon was in System Preferences
• Went to ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/ in Finder
• Copied "com.apple.systempreferences.some-random-UUID.plist" off to a file share (or USB drive should work)
• Logged back into the original user and copied the above file from the file share to the same location

(I think I had already deleted that file while messing around, but if it exists, overwrite it with the one you copied)

• Changed permissions to match the other files in that directory
• Reboot

Log back in and........ SET UP WALLET!!!

Hope this helps somebody - good luck!

-JC

It's also a binary file so the easiest way to set it might be a terminal command

Open the terminal app and use this command and you should see "1" (the wrong value):

defaults read .GlobalPreferences PKSecureElementAvailableFlags

You can change that to 3 using:

defaults write .GlobalPreferences PKSecureElementAvailableFlags 3

The Apple Engineers are aware of this issue and in theory are working on a fix to be released in a future OS update, but I felt compelled to find a solution myself just in case it doesn't happen in the near future, or is never truly addressed.

My theory is that when migrating a user from an older Mac there are essential user files missing that would normally be made upon the creation of a new user account. (At least on these new 2018 MacBook Pro's) So, after hours of testing, I found a non-destructive solution. You don't have to start from scratch, and you don't need to manually migrate everything one-by-one to a new user. Here is my solution:

Step 1: Make sure you have a backup of anything important

Step 2: Create a "New" user account

Step 3: Once logged in, copy the "New" user library folder into iCloud Drive/an External Drive (File Path: ~/Library/)

Step 4: Right click the "New" user library folder, click "Get Info", change the permissions of the folder so that your "Main" user is the owner or at least has Read/Write access.

Step 5: Login to your "Main" user account and make a copy/backup of the "Main" user library folder (If you have "Hey Siri" enabled, there will be a folder called "VoiceTrigger" that you will not be able to move. Disable "Hey Siri" until you're done to get around this.

Now this is where it gets a little tedious, but it is much faster than starting from scratch:

Step 6: Move the contents of the "Main" user library folder to the trash (Content within certain folders inside the user library folder will need to be dragged to the trash individually as the system requires certain folders to always exist)

Step 7: Move the contents of the "New" user library folder into the "Main" user library folder (If it asks, check the "Apply to All" box and click "Replace")

Step 8: Reboot

Finally, the Wallet & Apple Pay preference pane should appear in System Preferences. However, at this point you'll notice that all Preferences and App Data are set back to factory settings (Good thing you made a copy/backup of your original user library folder in Step 5)

Step 9: Select the contents of your copy/backup "Main" user library folder (this has all of your Preferences and App Data)

Step 10: Copy/Paste them into your current "Main" user library folder (File Path: ~/Library/)

Step 11: If it asks, check the "Apply to All" box and click "Replace" (Like in Step 6 you will have to move certain content from folders over individually)

Step 12: Reboot

At last, all your Preferences and App Data are back and you finally have access to Wallet & Apple Pay like you always should have!

This worked for me, so I hope it helps!

Best of luck to you all!

-Andy

I think it might be a permissions problem, the walletAvailabilityCheckTool is in the Wallet.prefPane, if I run this:

/System/Library/PreferencePanes/Wallet.prefPane/Contents/Resources/walletAvailab ilityCheckTool ; echo $?

it fails, returning 1 when I run as my migrated user, but works (returns 0) if I run it

• with sudo
• with sudo -u _applepay
• or from a new user that correctly displays the wallet preferences

Right, the OS is related to System files. The issue is related to User files and/or permissions (specifically ones in the ~/Library folder). As evidenced by the fact that you can create a New User Account or log into the Guest Account and see the Wallet & Apple Pay preference pane appear and function, but not on the Migrated User Account.

To be clear, this issue can be solved by creating a new user and transplanting the new user ~/Library files into the migrated user's ~/Library folder. However this is a bit of a hassle, and is sort of like killing an ant with a nuke.

Apple should provide a more practical and elegant solution for the average user.

I completely agree with your point about letting the issue be known. The more people that report this issue, the more likely Apple will see this as a priority and fix it.

I figured out the plist and the value within responsible for the issue after migrating an account from a non touchbar equipped Mac to one with it through a painful process of eliminate and diffing many preferences. Open ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist and change PKSecureElementAvailableFlags from a 1 to a 3. Save, logout, log back in and you should be able to access the Wallet & ApplePay preference pane.

Same thing for me. Selected Apple Pay to make the purchase and couldn't get it to work. Ended up having to use PayPal.

I gave in and am now doing a complete fresh install with no Migration. It's going to take a couple of days to set everything up, but hopefully it will be worth it. First thing I noticed is that Apple Pay is there and working when you don't do the Migration.

I figured since this is the best MacBook Pro I've owned and there was a lot of left over crude built up since 2009, it was time to start fresh and not burden the system with all the junk I've installed over the years.

Kenny

I notice crash logs for passd and walletAvailabilityCheckTool that contain the following. Looks like getting the wrong type of data from somewhere. I don't know where that is yet.

Crashed Thread: 0 Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Exception Type: EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT)

Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000

Exception Note: EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

Application Specific Information:

*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: '-[NSTaggedPointerString unsignedIntegerValue]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x3315'

terminating with uncaught exception of type NSException

abort() called

Application Specific Backtrace 1:

0 CoreFoundation 0x00007fff2a7bd2db __exceptionPreprocess + 171

1 libobjc.A.dylib 0x00007fff51a3cc76 objc_exception_throw + 48

2 CoreFoundation 0x00007fff2a855db4 -[NSObject(NSObject) doesNotRecognizeSelector:] + 132

3 CoreFoundation 0x00007fff2a733820 ___forwarding___ + 1456

4 CoreFoundation 0x00007fff2a7331e8 _CF_forwarding_prep_0 + 120

5 PassKitCore 0x00007fff479115f9 PKSecureElementAvailableFlags + 58

6 PassKitCore 0x00007fff4781ac9a __PKSecureElementIsAvailable_block_invoke + 32

7 libdispatch.dylib 0x00007fff5261cdb8 _dispatch_client_callout + 8

8 libdispatch.dylib 0x00007fff5261cd6b dispatch_once_f + 41

9 PassKitCore 0x00007fff4781ac71 PKSecureElementIsAvailable + 41

10 walletAvailabilityCheckTool 0x000000010dbf7988 walletAvailabilityCheckTool + 2440

11 libdyld.dylib 0x00007fff52656015 start + 1

Got this fixed, unfortunately you have to create a new user, and not use migration assistant, just shared folders, copy, fix permissions everywhere, etc. You might know if not. here:

macOS Sierra: Share files with others who use your Mac

Resolve issues caused by changing the permissions of items in your home folder - Apple Support

I've had the same problem, and starting today it's become worse - now Safari

• hangs for a minute whenever I open preferences (especially the privacy tab)
• hangs on web sites that use ApplePay (I assume it's checking if ApplePay is enabled).

I noticed in the log there's an error with nfrestore_service (see below). The first line is when I click on preferences, then exactly 1 minute later it seems to timeout and report the error (and the Safari preferences window opens)

Aug 1 16:48:42 nfrestore_service[2236]: DEPRECATED USE in libdispatch client: Setting timer interval to 0 requests a 1ns timer, did you mean FOREVER (a one-shot timer)?

Aug 1 16:49:42 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.nfrestore_service[2236]): Service exited with abnormal code: 255

I tried installing macOS on a new volume and had exactly the same problems so whatever is preventing it working might be stored in the T2 chip's secure enclave...

I had a 45 minute chat session that ended up with "you need to reinstall the OS". I ultimately created a new user and manually copied and chown'd everything. Also had to re-setup all my preferences within the OS which was just annoying, but for the regular user, MA should absolutely work as advertised...

Has anyone tried an OS re-install? It shouldn't delete apps, data or settings, but not changing the settings might be the catch in this scenario.