I thought the instructions called for whiskey but whatever worked for you lol!
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
iCloud HELP! Got locked out of my iCloud Keychain!
- Thread starter ivanpasic
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Totally did, but rum is needed for M1 models lol.
I am really happy that it is working for more than just me! I might have to modify the instructions for M1 users who go the VM route; replace whiskey with rum.
While I agree with other sentiments that Apple should fix this…I have little faith. For those of us who need it to be working, there isn’t time to wait. Quite frankly, Apple’s solution might be way more destructive. From what I have gathered so far, Apple’s current response is to tell people to create a new iCloud account (which is unacceptable).
If you want to wait to see what Apple does out of principle, that’s certainly fine, but there’s a relatively easy way to fix this. It’s kind of a pain in the ass, but it gets everything back to operational status. *shrug*
While I agree with other sentiments that Apple should fix this…I have little faith. For those of us who need it to be working, there isn’t time to wait. Quite frankly, Apple’s solution might be way more destructive. From what I have gathered so far, Apple’s current response is to tell people to create a new iCloud account (which is unacceptable).
If you want to wait to see what Apple does out of principle, that’s certainly fine, but there’s a relatively easy way to fix this. It’s kind of a pain in the ass, but it gets everything back to operational status. *shrug*
Last edited:
Quick question before I try the Catalina solution.
I'll be erasing my phone and Mac, but do I need to erase my iPas as well? Only reason I ask is because that is the only device that has all my passwords on it. I can lose them and deal, as laborious as that would be, but I figured I'd check here first.
@jprez1980, you mentioned your iPad, right?
I'll be erasing my phone and Mac, but do I need to erase my iPas as well? Only reason I ask is because that is the only device that has all my passwords on it. I can lose them and deal, as laborious as that would be, but I figured I'd check here first.
@jprez1980, you mentioned your iPad, right?
I didn’t erase the other devices. I erased my McBook Pro and did a clean Catalina install. Was able to set up keychain on it. Then I wiped my MacBook again and did a clean Monterey install. Still working.
I agree. I would not hold my breath waiting for Apple. My advisor called me today to tell me they still have no solution. I told her how we resolved it and she said: ‘Say that agin!’.
Agreed. My concern, given the last week of Apple just shrugging their shoulders thus far, I'm concerned their "solution" would be some sort of nuclear option.
Maybe, but when I set up a new device (which started this nightmare in the first place) this could go on again.
So I‘ll rather wait for the new iPhone and potentially fixing updates. On my iPad the fact that I don’t have my passwords handy is annoying, but as long as it works on my iPhone it’s okay.
Nevertheless, good that there is a „solution“.
At this point, once everything is working on the end to end angle, I’m probably just going to erase and set up everything as new regardless.
If this happens to me, it sounds like I can just spin up a Catalina VM in VMWare Fusion on my Mac Pro to solve it. Much easier than wiping a Mac. Unfortunately that doesn’t help anyone with only an M1 Mac.
Well, I'll be a sonofabitch.
I erased my only Mac and rolled back to Catalina off a thumb drive drive install. I didn't erase my phone or iPad and I did not remove any devices from my account.
I went through all the MacOS set up steps and then I was asked enter iPad passcode so, why the hell not, I did.
Got the prompt to use iCloud Keychain. Selected it.
Finished setting up my Mac and saw that Keychain was on in preferences, but my passwords weren't populated, so turned it off.
Grabbed my iPad and went to "Update Apple ID settings". Entered my password. It seemed to stick, but it sometimes seemed to tick before but would come back in tried to turn on Messages or Keychain or Apple Cash.
I turned on Messages. Hey! It stayed on!
So I turned on Keychain. Hey! That stayed on too! And the "Update Apple ID settings" prompt isn't there. Cool!
Went back to my Mac and turned on Keychain and all my passwords repopulated. Messages are downloading from the cloud and I was able to set up Apple Cash in Wallet on my iPad.
So then, I looked at my phone. Ok. Let's do this.
Turned everything on and added my Apple Card and set up Apple Cash and, lo and friggin' behold, we are back in business, baby!
I guess the fun part is going to come now officially setting everything back up from new again. But hell, if something gets screwed up, I can always try this fix again, right?
Only bad idea was drinking copious amounts of whiskey at 11:00 in the morning, but hey, that was one of the crucial steps.
@internetrando, I owe you a drink.
I'd also like to mention that this is why these forums can be the best. Bunch of Apple nerds, coming together, knocking their heads around and problem solving. Even if that solution is grabbing some whiskey and just throwing a dart at the board and hoping it hits the bullseye.
I erased my only Mac and rolled back to Catalina off a thumb drive drive install. I didn't erase my phone or iPad and I did not remove any devices from my account.
I went through all the MacOS set up steps and then I was asked enter iPad passcode so, why the hell not, I did.
Got the prompt to use iCloud Keychain. Selected it.
Finished setting up my Mac and saw that Keychain was on in preferences, but my passwords weren't populated, so turned it off.
Grabbed my iPad and went to "Update Apple ID settings". Entered my password. It seemed to stick, but it sometimes seemed to tick before but would come back in tried to turn on Messages or Keychain or Apple Cash.
I turned on Messages. Hey! It stayed on!
So I turned on Keychain. Hey! That stayed on too! And the "Update Apple ID settings" prompt isn't there. Cool!
Went back to my Mac and turned on Keychain and all my passwords repopulated. Messages are downloading from the cloud and I was able to set up Apple Cash in Wallet on my iPad.
So then, I looked at my phone. Ok. Let's do this.
Turned everything on and added my Apple Card and set up Apple Cash and, lo and friggin' behold, we are back in business, baby!
I guess the fun part is going to come now officially setting everything back up from new again. But hell, if something gets screwed up, I can always try this fix again, right?
Only bad idea was drinking copious amounts of whiskey at 11:00 in the morning, but hey, that was one of the crucial steps.
@internetrando, I owe you a drink.
I'd also like to mention that this is why these forums can be the best. Bunch of Apple nerds, coming together, knocking their heads around and problem solving. Even if that solution is grabbing some whiskey and just throwing a dart at the board and hoping it hits the bullseye.
Last edited:
Going back to Catalina on my Mac seems to have worked for me, after one extra step.
After using Recovery to go back to a clean install of Catalina I was still having the same issue when trying to enable end-to-end iCloud features after the initial setup. I eventually got the opportunity to reset my encrypted data but when this option was selected it still wouldn't authenticate to complete this step on my Mac. I wasn't sure what to try next but I tired to enable Keychain on my iPhone while outside of my home wifi (5G) and it went straight through, asked for local password, password from another device and it worked, Keychain was enabled on my phone. When I got back to my Mac I tried enabling Keychain again and it worked first time. So far so good...
Not sure if the Mac and phone being on different networks had anything to do with it but it worked.
Good luck to those who are trying to resolve this, it sure is frustrating.
After using Recovery to go back to a clean install of Catalina I was still having the same issue when trying to enable end-to-end iCloud features after the initial setup. I eventually got the opportunity to reset my encrypted data but when this option was selected it still wouldn't authenticate to complete this step on my Mac. I wasn't sure what to try next but I tired to enable Keychain on my iPhone while outside of my home wifi (5G) and it went straight through, asked for local password, password from another device and it worked, Keychain was enabled on my phone. When I got back to my Mac I tried enabling Keychain again and it worked first time. So far so good...
Not sure if the Mac and phone being on different networks had anything to do with it but it worked.
Good luck to those who are trying to resolve this, it sure is frustrating.
Hey everyone! I am another person that has been following this blog for many years now. I have watched all of you legends solve many problems, and give amazing insights to a variety of topics.
I have also been having this issue for a couple of weeks, and not finding any fixes through the support channels. Like you, I am a fan boy…without the technical wizardry you all posses. I tried to go to Internet recovery mode. The only option is to reinstall macOS Big Sur. I really lack any kind of software technological advancements, and was wondering if I might get a little more help?
And I could’ve sworn step one said repeat until so tired you fall asleep. Lol
I have also been having this issue for a couple of weeks, and not finding any fixes through the support channels. Like you, I am a fan boy…without the technical wizardry you all posses. I tried to go to Internet recovery mode. The only option is to reinstall macOS Big Sur. I really lack any kind of software technological advancements, and was wondering if I might get a little more help?
And I could’ve sworn step one said repeat until so tired you fall asleep. Lol
1. Download macOS Catalina by going into terminal and typing the following command: softwareupdate --fetch-full-installer --full-installer-version 10.15.7. Follow the prompts and questions. Eventually Catalina will download into your applications folder.
2. insert a USB flash drive and create a Catalina bootable drive. You can Google how to do this - it’s simple.
from here on insert the bootable usb drive and restart your Mac while holding the option key. Select to boot from the bootable drive then proceed as you normally would for a clean install.
please note if you have a Mac with a t2 security chip you will have to change security settings to allow booting from an external dive.
make a backup of everything on your drive just to be safe.
once done you can create a bootable usb of big sur: softwareupdate --fetch-full-installer --full-installer-version 11.5.1 and perform a clean install of big sur
hopefully this helps. If unsure best not to do this - don’t want you losing data
Thank you so much!!!!! Hours of YouTube and articles. I was left scratching my head. Somehow I completely understand this! I have called up my slightly more technologically inclined friend to oversee. I just always hate reminding him how much I don’t know! I’ll give you all the credit. But pretend I kind of knew something! Hahahahahah
So I woke up today with a “Update Apple ID settings” message and realizing that my iCloud Keychain, iMessage sync, Health and Fitness data and so on are all disabled.
After trying everything and even more to find out what happened (including singing out of iCloud on my iPhone, iPad and Mac and restore all of them) nothing changes.
Unfortunately my Mac is an M1 and I cannot downgrade to Catalina, so it seems there is no fix for me.
This is so annoying and I never have experienced something like this since I’m an Apple user.
I don’t know how to proceed at this point. Just waiting for a fix.
After trying everything and even more to find out what happened (including singing out of iCloud on my iPhone, iPad and Mac and restore all of them) nothing changes.
Unfortunately my Mac is an M1 and I cannot downgrade to Catalina, so it seems there is no fix for me.
This is so annoying and I never have experienced something like this since I’m an Apple user.
I don’t know how to proceed at this point. Just waiting for a fix.
I’m sorry for you. Suggest you reach out to some of the corporate guys at Apple with an email. Will keep a pressure mounting.
Sorry to hear you’re now a member of the wtf club.
Apple definitely needs to find a solution for this. Regardless if some of us have fixed it. Especially since not everyone can downgrade to Catalina.
Last edited:
Came here from Reddit after finding out about this thread and I’ve got a question:
The only Mac I have access to is a shared iMac and when I tried downgrading to Catalina from Big Sur, does it require a complete wipe to do so? It’s not super feasible for the other users of the iMac. ?
This entire unable to enable end to end encryption debacle is honestly driving me nuts, I’ve never had such a terrible experience with Apple ever!
The only Mac I have access to is a shared iMac and when I tried downgrading to Catalina from Big Sur, does it require a complete wipe to do so? It’s not super feasible for the other users of the iMac. ?
This entire unable to enable end to end encryption debacle is honestly driving me nuts, I’ve never had such a terrible experience with Apple ever!
I think all of us who used the Catalina solution did a clean wipe. I certainly did it at my end. For me doing clean wipes is never an issue since all my stuff is stored in iCloud so once I set the system up, the rest happens automatically. It is frustrating that Apple has not done anything to fix this issue, that there is no mention of this issue on their service status pages and that MacRumors has not fond it necessary to feature this in an article.
Is there anything we can do to get this more visible? I’d definitely play a part in making some noise! I never thought it’d come to this day of leaning on social media or something to force Apple to get something fixed. ?
Someone is have emailed Tim Cook’s office. tcook@apple.com.
As for getting, say, MacRumors to do a write up on it, that’s out of our hands.
@ivanpasic, I don’t know about you, but I’m really curious as to the correlation with this happening and how it specifically relates to Big Sur/Monterey beta.
I agree with @movieator I would try emailing Tim Cook at the above address. You can try tweeting to Apple Support and referencing this thread. At the top of this page, there is an option to alert MacRumors to a topic, try emailing them.
@movieator I agree. Currently all my devices are on a beta and I am not touching anything as things seem to be working for me.