What does "Password_Placeholder" mean?

[Dutch60]

(I don' t know if this is the right forum. I give it a try. Also posted this on another website; no answers yet. Guess there are more Mac knowledgeable people here. So, I hope).

Instead of just typing my password when I turn on my Mac, it says "password_Placeholder" in the bar where I normally type my password. When I fill in my regular password, all is well and I get acces to my Mac (as usual). So, for accessing my iMac effectively nothing else has changed.

Still I' m curious what this means...."password_placeholder". Why? What is it? Are there any changes anywhere on my iMac? Should I just ignore that? Change it?...if so...how?

Thank you!


Anyone?

 

[Boyd01]

Never saw anything like that myself, sorry.

 

[DeltaMac]

Is this a NEW Mac?
Who set it up for you? Do you own this Mac, or you are just the user (and the Mac belongs to your employer)?

The "Password_Placeholder" is certainly not a standard configuration.
But, on thinking a bit, is there a possibility that there is a "profile" on your Mac? That would be used to provide a standard/controlled setup on Macs that are used in a business or other type of institutional use, such as school setups. I think it would be possible that a profile might show that form of login (although "password_Placeholder" seems a bit pretentious, or that a system admin forget to clean up part of the new computer setup for their company ?? )

 

[kschendel]

I've never heard of it either. Any chance of taking a photo and posting it or a link to it?

 

[Nermal]

Are you using English or another language? It sounds like there might be a message that Apple failed to translate.

 

[HDFan]

What Mac are you using? What OS version?

 

[Dutch60]

Ok. First of all, thank you for your reactions!
I' ll try to give some answers.

Below there are 2 images...
This is what I see when I start up my iMac: (I've deleted my personal name below the yin yang sign). Until a few days ago, I didn't t read "password_placeholder"....(just blank to fill in my password).


.

I fill in my regular password and while the Mac starts up, I see this at the bottom of my screen:

I cannot remember I saw "RECOVERY_OS_INFO_MSG" before.
Within a few seconds I'm logged in (black screen like above for login disappears obviously), and everything works as it should. No problems whatsoever.

For the questions so far :
- my iMac is 2019 27" 5k Intel . Works fine and still fast enough.
- it' s my personal Mac; nothing for work.
- I have a second screen attached with usb-c to my iMac (Eizo screen); this isn' t causing any problems and works perfectly.
- macOS Monterey 12.6.2

 

[Fishrrman]

I've never seen anything like that before.

Could you try this:
- shut down, all the way off
- DISCONNECT the external monitor temporarily
- reboot
- does the same login screen show up?

 

[arw]

At first I thought it could be related to any Accessibility options like VoiceOver, but the “recovery“ part seems weird for a normal boot.
If a NVRAM reset doesn‘t help and no other solutions occur, I‘d download the macOS 12.6.2 full installer and let it re-install the system.
(Always backup your data, but the re-install is designed to keep everything (apps, user data) and just ensures a proper system volume and recovery partition to rule that out.)
I use MDS to download the installers.

EDIT: I know the sealed-system-volume approach should not let any problems in this regard left undetected, but as a re-install doesn‘t do any harm, that‘s what I would do if no better solutions come up.

 

[NoBoMac]

Wild guess: turned off SIP and installed some skin/alternate theme? Removed languages? Ran a cleaner program that trashed things it should not have?

(WG as sealed volume should[?] throw some errors/problems at boot, one would assume)

 

[Nermal]

(WG as sealed volume should[?] throw some errors/problems at boot, one would assume)

I wonder whether the files are all still there, but the OS has lost track of which language it's supposed to be using.

My suggestion is to go to System Preferences/Language & Region, set the primary language (top of the list) to something else, reboot, then set it back to your preferred language and reboot again.

 

[anshuvorty]

Erase the disk, reinstall macOS, and then check is the issue persists.

 

[Dutch60]

I've never seen anything like that before.

Could you try this:
- shut down, all the way off
- DISCONNECT the external monitor temporarily
- reboot
- does the same login screen show up?

I tried just that....nothing changed.

 

[Dutch60]

Wild guess: turned off SIP and installed some skin/alternate theme? Removed languages? Ran a cleaner program that trashed things it should not have?

(WG as sealed volume should[?] throw some errors/problems at boot, one would assume)

SIP is on (just checked)....didn' t do anything to it....don' t know how it was a week ago, but I never looked at it.
I don' t run any cleaner programs; never did and will stay far away from it.

 

[DeltaMac]

So... the "Password_Placeholder" did NOT appear until a few days ago?

I did find this (showing the same placeholder text, plus others)
Also, running the same Monterey 12.6.2
I suspect it is something that reverts the login screen to some developer mode (hence showing text descriptors instead of graphic elements), and maybe only on the 12.6.2
maybe updating to the current 12.6.3 will take care of that?

 

[Dutch60]

I wonder whether the files are all still there, but the OS has lost track of which language it's supposed to be using.

My suggestion is to go to System Preferences/Language & Region, set the primary language (top of the list) to something else, reboot, then set it back to your preferred language and reboot again.

I did this...and when I wanted to reboot again...I saw the post of DeltaMac.
So first checked the Monterey update...and updated (took a while).
On reboot everything was normal again (!).
To be sure, I just shut iMac down (all the way off)....and after waiting for maybe 10 minutes I rebooted.
YES!...Everything seems normal again!
Don' t know if this has to do with language settings....or the update to 12.6.3...but it works!

Now I hope, that everything is the same tomorrow when I start on my iMac again (evening now where I live).

I want to thank all of you!👍👍👍👍👍👍👍

 

[Dutch60]

Erase the disk, reinstall macOS, and then check is the issue persists.

Thank you...but I hope and think the problem is solved now.

 

[Dutch60]

So... the "Password_Placeholder" did NOT appear until a few days ago?

I did find this (showing the same placeholder text, plus others)
Also, running the same Monterey 12.6.2
I suspect it is something that reverts the login screen to some developer mode (hence showing text descriptors instead of graphic elements), and maybe only on the 12.6.2
maybe updating to the current 12.6.3 will take care of that?

Thank you DeltaMac...your advice could have been the solution! Either language change (and changing back)....or updating to 12.6.3 did it!
I hope it' ll stay like this now...we' ll see tomorrow.

 

[Dutch60]

At first I thought it could be related to any Accessibility options like VoiceOver, but the “recovery“ part seems weird for a normal boot.
If a NVRAM reset doesn‘t help and no other solutions occur, I‘d download the macOS 12.6.2 full installer and let it re-install the system.
(Always backup your data, but the re-install is designed to keep everything (apps, user data) and just ensures a proper system volume and recovery partition to rule that out.)
I use MDS to download the installers.

EDIT: I know the sealed-system-volume approach should not let any problems in this regard left undetected, but as a re-install doesn‘t do any harm, that‘s what I would do if no better solutions come up.

Thank you arw!
I hope (and think), the problem is solved now (without any re-install)

 

[Dutch60]

Wild guess: turned off SIP and installed some skin/alternate theme? Removed languages? Ran a cleaner program that trashed things it should not have?

(WG as sealed volume should[?] throw some errors/problems at boot, one would assume)

Thank you NoBoMac!

 

[floral]

Damn, it looked really cool. You should've kept it

 

[Dutch60]

Damn, it looked really cool. You should've kept it

Maybe I should have....but still happy that it' s different now

 

[floral]

Maybe I should have....but still happy that it' s different now

Guess so.