Mac password issues

’m having an issue on my new Mac running macOS 27 where my Mac login password is definitely correct, but it keeps being rejected when I try to enable iCloud Passwords/Keychain or update my Apple Account settings.

I’ve been using ChatGPT/AI to try and troubleshoot this myself, but unfortunately we haven’t managed to fix it, so I’m hoping someone here might know what is going on.

The user account on my Mac is called Jamie. I had an issue with the password previously and ended up using my FileVault recovery key from the Mac login/recovery screen to reset the password. I set the password to ***.

I am 100% certain that *** is now the correct password for the Jamie account. I have completely restarted the Mac and successfully logged into Jamie using 3108 without Touch ID. I’ve also gone into System Settings > Users & Groups and it accepts 3108 as the current password when I go through the change password process.

The problem happens when I go to System Settings > Apple Account > iCloud > Passwords & Keychain. “Sync this Mac” is currently turned off. When I try to turn it on, I get a message saying:

“The password you use to unlock this Mac will also be used to access saved passwords and other sensitive data you store in iCloud.”

It then asks for the password for the user Jamie. I enter 3108 and it says the password is incorrect. I’ve also tried every previous password I can remember and none of those work either.

I get essentially the same problem with the “Update Apple Account Settings” notification.

My iPhone is logged into the same Apple Account and iCloud Passwords/Keychain is working properly on there. “Sync this iPhone” is enabled and I’ve checked the Passwords app and all of my saved passwords are still there and accessible.

I then tried looking at Keychain Access on the Mac. Under the login keychain, “Change Password for Keychain ‘login’” is greyed out.

I went to Keychain Access > Settings and tried “Reset Default Keychains”. However, pressing the button literally does nothing. There is no warning, confirmation, password prompt or error message.

I completely quit Keychain Access, restarted the Mac, logged back into Jamie with 3108, reopened Keychain Access and tried Reset Default Keychains again. It still does absolutely nothing.

I haven’t manually deleted anything from ~/Library/Keychains or started running Terminal commands because I don’t want to make the problem worse. I also haven’t changed anything on my iPhone because that currently has all of my iCloud passwords working correctly.

The Mac is new, so I don’t really care about anything stored locally in its existing keychain. I just want to get the Mac/keychain back into a clean state and get iCloud Passwords syncing again.

Does anyone know why macOS would accept *** everywhere as the correct Jamie login password but reject it specifically when iCloud/Keychain asks for “the password you use to unlock this Mac”? Also, is there another safe way of creating/resetting the login keychain when the Reset Default Keychains button does nothing?

Not being able to do anything big or access account info until I have this mystery password is a pain and I can't even reset the Mac as it requires the pin to do that. Any help greatly appreciated thanks

Any help would be appreciated because I’ve gone through quite a lot of troubleshooting with AI at this point and we haven’t managed to get anywhere.

[Edited by Moderator]

What I would do is to delete the existing Keychain. That will result in the need to provide credentials (login names / passwords) for all the services that require authentication, and of course they probably all have different unique requirements.

Delete a keychain in Keychain Access on Mac - Apple Support

I realize providing all your various passwords etc will be tedious, but you only have to do that once.

What I would not do is use ChatGPT/AI for anything. At best it will be a waste of time. Having said that Apple is using their own Apple Intelligence for first line technical support. It's not bad, considering the overwhelming number of concerns people have are mundane — forgotten login credentials and the like — and you already know the answer to that. Your concern is not that since you are 100% certain your login credentials are correct, but you will need to go through the motions anyway until it gives up and shuttles you off to an actual human.

Since your Mac is new Apple will work with you until it's fixed. Contact them here: Official Apple Support, and be patient with their ever so polite yet non-human non-sentient helper-bot.

Mac password issues

1 reply