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Need to get old passwords

Asiel Norton

Asiel Norton

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 4, 2020
12
7
So I had an old MacBook Pro and iPhone get destroyed on the same day due to water. Now I don't have any of my Safari passwords. I just bought a refurbished MacBook Pro and need to import the passwords from the old hard drive. I can't get into my gmail account, iCloud, App Store, or anything. Have no idea what my old passwords are. I got an external casing to connect old hard drive to new Mac. Ive tried using keychain access from the new MacBook, but nothing shows up from old drive. Though it is mounting, and all the apps and documents, etc. are still there. I've gone into safari preferences, and keychains from the library of the old drive copied the folders over to the new Mac. but I have no idea how to get my safari to fill in passwords, or even see what they are. any help would be appreciated.
 
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id have to take it in, as I've found apple support online extremely unuseful. im surprised that this is such a unique problem, id think with all the apple users out there, and automatic generating passwords and automatic sign ins, that this would be a more common occurrence.
 
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if you have been using iCloud and saving passwords there, you should automatically get them on your new Mac. You have to enable keychain in iCloud prefs, but other than that, there is no other reason why you shouldn't be getting them.
 
Madonepro said:
if you have been using iCloud and saving passwords there, you should automatically get them on your new Mac. You have to enable keychain in iCloud prefs, but other than that, there is no other reason why you shouldn't be getting them.
Click to expand...

I don't have my passwords. I can't get into my iCloud.
 
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Can you boot your new Mac from the external drive? That should make it behave just like your old computer. Newer Macs with the T2 chip require a special procedure for this and of course, the new Mac needs to support the operating system you were using on the old one.

About Startup Security Utility on a Mac with the Apple T2 Security Chip - Apple Support

Use Startup Security Utility to make sure that your Mac always starts up from your designated startup disk, and always from a legitimate, trusted operating system.
support.apple.com support.apple.com
 
Asiel Norton said:
I didn't think of that. just did.
Click to expand...
Just did what? If you haven't already, on the device you have access to, go to preferences/appleid and scroll down to keychain and toggle it on, and if it's already on, do the it trick of turning off and then back on.
 
Your safari passwords are stored in your keychain. iCloud uses your Apple ID and password. You should know what that is as Apple will periodically ask you for it, even if you are using Touch ID or Face ID.

If you are able to set up your new Mac using your Apple ID then it will sync your Keychain over with all your safari passwords. Unless you disabled Keychain in iCloud.
 
Come to think of it, Migration Assistant should automatically import your passwords (won't it?). If you had the external drive connected when you setup the new Mac, it should have asked if you want to do this and then allowed you to pick the external drive as if it were your old computer.

If you have already setup the new computer, then look in the Applications > Utilities folder and open Migration Assistant while you have the external drive connected.
 
I don't trust keychain as my only "storing point" for passwords.

I created a separate database for passwords, with everything "in the clear" so I can easily find them when needed.

Another way is to keep "a little black book" in which you physically WRITE DOWN information like this.

If you use pages, attached below is a Pages document I created that can be used to store password info.
TO PROTECT IT, you can go to the Pages "file" menu and choose "set password". This will create a password that will protect the entire document.
 

Attachments

  • The Vault (Pages).zip
    54.2 KB · Views: 102
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Moderator Note: I have merged these two threads (with a redirect from the other forum). In the future, please don't create more than one thread on the same topic.
 
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