• I Forgot My Admin Password For Macbook Air
• I Forgot My Admin Password For Mac
• Forgot Master Password On Mac

Adding a password to your Mac is essential for helping to keep your sensitive files and personal information safe from prying eyes, but what happens if you forget or lose this password? Does it mean you can never log into your Mac again? Even if you haven’t password-protected your Mac’s login screen (and if you haven’t, then you really should) every Mac has an admin password, and there’s a wide range of tasks that require you to enter this password. Whether it’s installing, deleting or changing important apps or files; making changes to your system settings; or updating to the latest version of macOS, sooner or later you’re going to have to enter your admin password. As soon as you realise that you can’t remember your admin password, you should take steps to recover it – even if you don’t need it right now. Regardless of whether you’ve lost your login password or your admin password (or whether you use the same password for both tasks) there’s several ways that you can regain full access to your Mac – so don’t panic!

I Forgot My Admin Password For Macbook Air

In this article I’m going to share several techniques that you can use to recover or reset your Mac’s password, including using macOS’ built-in password reset utility. Note that if you do reset your password, then you’ll need to create a new Keychain file the first time you use this new password – this something I’ll be covering towards the end of this article. Get a password hint Hopefully, when you created your admin or login password, you also created a password hint, as this can be invaluable for jogging your memory. MacOS will display the password hint automatically after you’ve entered an incorrect password three times on the login screen, but you can also trigger this hint manually by clicking the little ‘?’ icon that appears alongside the password field. If you’re struggling to remember your admin password:.

Click the ‘Apple’ logo in the toolbar, and select ‘System Preferences’. Select ‘Users & Groups.’. Click the little padlock icon, which launches the password dialogue. Either press the ‘Enter’ key on your keyboard three times, or enter an incorrect password three times, and the hint will appear. If macOS doesn’t display a password hint, then you either didn’t create one or this feature isn’t enabled on your Mac.

If it’s the latter, then bad news: you need to enter your password in order to enable the password hint feature. Clearly, this isn’t something you can currently do, but once you have successfully logged into your account, I’d recommend enabling this feature just in case you ever forget your password again:. Navigate to ‘System Preferences Users & Groups.’. Click the little padlock icon and enter your password.

Select ‘Login Options.’. Select the ‘Show password hints’ checkbox. Click the padlock icon again to save your changes. Reset using your Apple ID Starting with macOS Lion, you can reset your login password using your Apple ID (and if at this point you’re panicking because you’ve forgot the password for your Apple ID, then head over to the page). As we’ve already seen, entering an incorrect password three times on the login screen will display a password hint, but you may have noticed that it also displays a ‘Reset using your Apple ID’ popup.

I Forgot My Admin Password For Mac

If you see this popup, then this indicates that you can reset your password using your Apple ID:. Select the little arrow icon that appears alongside the popup. Enter your Apple ID and password, then select the ‘Reset Password’ button. macOS will warn you that resetting your password will create a new Keychain file; if you’re happy to proceed then click ‘OK.’. Enter your new password, verify it, and then create a password hint. Click ‘Reset Password.’.

Reboot your Mac, and once it restarts you’ll be able to log in with your new password. If the ‘Reset using your Apple ID’ popup doesn’t appear on the login screen, then you’ll need to use another method of resetting your password. However, having the option to reset your password using your Apple ID can come in handy, so once you’ve regained access to your account you should take a few moments to enable this feature:.

Navigate to ‘System Preferences Users & Groups.’. Click the little padlock in the bottom-left corner, enter your password and click ‘Unlock.’. Select the ‘Allow user to reset password using Apple ID’ checkbox.

Reset using another admin account Since macOS Tiger, you’ve been able to create multiple admin accounts on the same Mac. If you do have a second account with admin rights, then it’s possible to reset your password by logging into this account:. Log into the second admin account, or ask the account’s owner to log into their account for you. Select ‘ System Preferences Users & Groups.’.

Click the padlock icon, and enter the password for this admin account. In the left-hand menu, select the account that’s due for a password reset. Click the ‘Reset Password’ button. In the window that appears, enter a new password and create a password hint. Select ‘Change Password.’.

Log out of this account. Log into your account using your new password. Use Recovery Mode If none of the above methods work, then you can reset your password using macOS’ built-in password recovery utility, which you access via Recovery Mode:. You can only boot into Recovery Mode when your Mac is starting up, so restart your computer and hold down the ‘Command’ and ‘R’ keys. Release these keys as soon as you see the Apple logo.

Once you’re in Recovery Mode, you’ll see the ‘macOS Utilities’ dialogue. Select ‘Disk Utility’ and then press ‘Continue.’. Select ‘Utilities Terminal.’. Type the following command into the Terminal: resetpassword. Press the ‘Enter’ key on your keyboard. Close the Terminal window, and the ‘Reset Password’ dialogue will appear.

Select your volume hard drive. If you have multiple hard drives, then you’ll need to select the hard drive where your operating system is located, which is usually Macintosh HD. Select your account. Enter your new password and password hint, and then click ‘Save,’ followed by ‘OK.’.

Restart your Mac by clicking the ‘Apple’ logo in the toolbar, and then selecting ‘Restart.’ Once your Mac reboots, you’ll be able to log into your account using your new password. While this technique can help you regain access to your Mac, it does mean that anyone can change your Mac’s password simply by booting into Recovery Mode. For many Mac users this is a huge cause for concern, so you may want to consider adding some extra security by enabling FireVault. FireVault helps to keep your sensitive files and information safe from prying eyes by encrypting the contents of your hard drive, while also adding a lock to macOS’ password recovery utility. With FireVault in place, the only way someone can gain access to your encrypted, password-protected Mac is by booting into Recovery Mode, completely wiping your computer, and then starting from scratch with a fresh install of macOS.

Note that if you do decide to enable FireVault, then it’ll provide you with an automatically-generated recovery key. If you lose this key and forget your login password, then you’ll be unable to reset your password using the Recovery Mode method, so it’s crucial that you make a note of this key.

To enable FileVault:. Select ‘System Preferences Security & Privacy FileVault.’. Click the little padlock icon and enter your admin name and password.

Give the ‘Turn On FileVault’ button a click. At this point, FireVault will generate a recovery key – you cannot recover this key if you lose it, so either jot it down somewhere safe or print out a copy. Restart your Mac, and FireVault will begin encrypting the files on your drive. Consider using a password management service If you seem to spend half your life filling in password recovery forms, then you may want to consider storing your login information in a third party password management app, such as,. Creating a New Keychain In this article I’ve shown you several ways of resetting a lost password, but whichever method you opt for, your Keychain will still be secured with your previous password.

The first time you log in with your new password, macOS will inform you that it’s unable to unlock your Keychain, and you’ll have the option to either update your Keychain password or create a new Keychain. You can only update your Keychain password by entering your old password, so unless you have a brainwave and suddenly remember your old password, you will need to create a new Keychain file. Creating a replacement file that’s secured with your new password is relatively straightforward, but the downside is that this Keychain file will be completely empty, so you’ll need to spend some time re-entering all the usernames and passwords that were stored in your old Keychain. This can be a time-consuming process, but unfortunately there’s no workaround! To create a new Keychain file:. Open a Finder window and navigate to ‘Applications Utilities Keychain Access.’.

Select ‘Keychain Access Preferences’ from the menu bar. Make sure the ‘General’ tab is selected, and then click ‘Reset My Default Keychain.’. Enter your new password, and Keychain Access will create an empty login keychain that isn’t secured with a password. Click ‘OK.’. As soon as you enter your password (for example, the next time you log into your account) Keychain will update to use this new password.

Even though you can set up your Mac to automatically log into your user account without a password, your computer is going to be more secure if you use one. Of course, there’s a slight danger that a day will come when that password doesn’t work—you’ve modified your Mac in some way that’s password-unfriendly or you’ve been negligent. Or you may simply forget what your password is, which can happen if you use a standard user account for daily tasks and haven’t touched the administrators account in awhile. Fortunately, if you have lost your password, there are several approaches you can take for either regaining complete access to your Mac or, at least, getting to the specific data you need. Here are some tips for doing just that. Resetting your Password Apple includes several options for resetting account passwords in OS X. The approaches I outline below depend on how much access to your Mac you currently have.

Change it from an admin account To maximize your Mac’s security you should have both an administrator account for administrative tasks and a standard account that you use for your primary identity (you can still perform administrative tasks from within your main account by authenticating with the administrator credentials). If you configure your Mac this way you can then log into the admin account and use the Users & Groups system preferences to change your main account’s password. To do this, click the lock icon in the Users & Groups system preferences to authenticate, and then click the account you can’t log into. In the account’s settings, click the Reset Password button to change the account’s password. Log into your administrator account to change another account's password.

Use Single-User mode Every Mac has a main user account called “root,” which is the system account that’s used to launch the essential background services required for your Mac to operate. While this account is generally hidden and inaccessible, you can quickly get to it for its administrative capabilities by booting your Mac into single-user mode. To proceed you’ll need to know the short name of the account for which you would like to reset the password, and then perform the following steps:.

Restart your Mac and hold down Command-S at the boot chimes. When you see the command prompt, enter the following command to put the boot drive into read and write mode: mount -uw /. Now run the following command to load Open Directory (Apple’s account directory service in OS X): launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.opendirectoryd.plist. Reset the password for your user account by entering the following command (replace “username” with the short name of the desired account) passwd username Use an Apple ID In OS X you can bind your user account to your Apple ID and then use it to reset your OS X password if you’ve lost it. This feature first requires that you’ve associated your Apple ID, which can be done by going to the Users & Groups system preferences, and then clicking the Set button next to the words Apple ID and then supplying your Apple ID and password.

You can then enable the option to allow resetting your password using an Apple ID. (If you instead see a Change button next to the Apple ID entry, your ID is already associated.) Enter an incorrect password three times and you'll be prompted for an Apple ID. With this set up, you can reset your password by entering the incorrect password three times on the login screen, which will invoke a panel that prompts you to reset the account’s password using your Apple ID. Follow the on-screen instructions and you should be able to change your password and then log into your account. Note that of the options I present here, this one should preserve the link to your keychain, allowing you to continue working seamlessly with your new password, without having to store other passwords in your keychain again. Use Recovery Mode A final option for resetting your password is to use Apple’s recovery tools.

This will perhaps be the easiest approach in most cases, and can be done with the following procedure:. Reboot into Recovery mode or Internet Recovery by holding Command-R at startup. Choose Terminal in the Utilities menu. Enter resetpassword (all one word, and lowercase) in the Terminal window and press Return. Select your boot drive in the utility that appears. Choose your user account from the pop-up menu.

Click the button to reset the account’s password and supply a new one when prompted. If you use FileVault encryption with your Mac, the password reset utility will not show your boot drive until you first unlock it with Disk Utility. To do this, open Disk Utility where you will see your drive grayed out in the list of devices. Select it and click the Unlock toolbar button and then, after supplying your password to unlock the drive, you can select your disk in the password reset utility. Recovering your data The options I’ve mentioned will help you reset your password and log into your account. However, if you still can’t get into your Mac because of a lost or forgotten password there’s a way to get some of the data off of it. That way is Target Disk mode.

Target Disk mode lets you access your Mac’s hard drive as an external drive, provided that you don’t have FileVault enabled or a firmware password set on your Mac. If you do have FileVault enabled and can’t remember either your password for unlocking the drive or the drive’s recovery key, then you won’t be able to recover any data from it.

Forgot Master Password On Mac

In this case your best bet is to retrieve your data from a backup. Use the Info window to ignore ownership on the connected drive. To use Target Disk mode, restart the Mac you wish to access and hold the “T” key when you hear the boot chimes. Connect this Mac to another one via either a FireWire or Thunderbolt cable and its hard drive should appear as an external drive to your second Mac. From here you can manually copy data from the drive or use Apple’s Migration Assistant or Setup Assistant tools to transfer your data.

While you should be able to browse all files on the drive in Target Disk mode, there may be some times when you can’t do this, either because of permissions restrictions or because files are hidden. To overcome this, you can select the drive mounted via Target Disk mode, press Command-I to produce the drive’s Info window, and enable the option to ignore ownership on the volume (at the bottom of the information window). To manage hidden files, you can temporarily show all files in your current Mac’s Finder by running the following command in the OS X Terminal app: defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool TRUE; killall Finder When you’re finished accessing these files, hide your files again by using this Terminal command: defaults delete com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles; killall Finder A safe haven Much as recovering or resetting a forgotten password may sound like a bother, its a small inconvenience that’s entirely trumped by a Mac protected with a solid password.

Ideally you’ll never need to turn to these techniques. But should the bad thing happen, it’s nice to know you have so many fallbacks.