Keychain problems in macOS Sierra
Following a security scare, I changed all the passwords on my Mac and online accounts. This has upset my Mac though, and it keeps asking me to enter my login password, when it didn’t before. It’s running Sierra, and uses a local keychain. How can I fix this?
MIKE GRIFFIN
Howard Oakley replies: Keychain problems are common in Sierra, and often provoked by changing your password, which can disturb its previous settings. At worst, the keychain password may get out of sync with your normal login password; if that were the case, you’d have to keep entering your old password to unlock your keychain. Open Keychain Access in your /Applications/Utilities folder. It defaults to showing your login keychain, which should be called ‘login’. If its name has been changed, or you see another user keychain, that can be a cause. In that situation, you may need to copy
items from that extra keychain and paste them into the one named ‘login’. If the login keychain is there and looks correct, containing current passwords and more, make sure it’s unlocked. With it selected at the upper left of the window, use the ‘Change Settings’ command in the Edit menu to ensure that your keychain doesn’t lock after a period of inactivity, or when your Mac sleeps; those options will result in prompts to enter your password to unlock it. Check again that your login keychain is unlocked, and quit the app. Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to repair a keychain now; that had to be removed from OS X 10.11.2 because it was a security vulnerability.