Touch ID requests old password after Migration Assistant on MacBook Pro

Used Migration Assistant to move my wife's old Macbook 13" to her new Macbook Pro 14" M5. Migration went well - it appears everything transferred. However, during the migration, the assistant provided a temporary password for my wife's account. After the migration, she "logged" into the new Macbook 14" and upon doing so was required to change her password to be able to login to her user account on the computer. She now wants to set up the touch ID but when it asks for the password for her user account she has to use the temp password. Why doesn't it use the new password for her user account?

Using OS Tahoe 26.4.1

Posted on Oct 9, 2026 4:18 PM

3 replies

WheelieNick

Level 9 (74,110 points)

Oct 10, 2026 12:55 AM in response to mkgrot

This issue occurs because your wife's macOS user login password and her "login" Keychain password are currently out of sync.

Grant Bennet-Alder

Level 10 (148,617 points)

Oct 10, 2026 9:27 AM in response to mkgrot

DO NOT manually force-RESET your keychain password, because that dumps your old keychain and creates a new one... but there new one is EMPTY and has none of you passwords in it.

That is, to put it mildly, extremely inconvenient.

--------

Be certain whatever process you use asks for and uses the OLD keychain password in the process of creating a NEW keychain password.

This article suggests a way to UPDATE the keychain password, based on the OLD keychain password.

If you need to update your keychain password on Mac - Apple Support

DANGER DANGER DANGER

The step-by-step procedure halfway down the page is NOT what the Title of the article suggests.

That procedure DUMPS your keychain -- with no hope of recovery, and it is the most obvious thing in the entire extremely misleading article.

mkgrot Author

Level 1 (0 points)

Oct 10, 2026 7:52 AM in response to WheelieNick

Then how do I fix that?

Originally posted at discussions.apple.com/thread/256373384