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What Passwords Will iCloud Keychain Leave If I Disable Keychain?

I’m thinking about the pros and cons of Apple’s iCloud Keychain. If I enable it and start using the Safari suggested passwords, then decide after using the system that I want to try a different Password Manager, and disable Keychain, do you know what passwords would be left, my originals or the Safari suggested passwords?

Do you recommend a Password Manager for my MacBook?

My machine is a MacBook Pro Retina 13″ Mid 2014 with macOS Mohave 10.14.4.

Thanks for your help.
—–
Tom

Comments: 3 Responses to “What Passwords Will iCloud Keychain Leave If I Disable Keychain?”

    5 years ago

    Not sure what you mean by "my originals or the Safari suggested passwords." They are the same thing. Safari stores your passwords in iCloud Keychain -- one place. If you turn that feature off, then you won't see those.

    That said, I'm not sure why you would turn it off. The passwords would still be there, you would just not be using them. It would be like having the key to your house in your pocket, but deciding you didn't want to use keys in your pocket anymore.

    If you want to delete a password from iCloud Keychain, then you could delete it. But turning it off wouldn't make sense. I suppose if you really wanted to leave iCloud Keychain you would delete your passwords first and then turn it off.

    If you wanted to switch from iCloud Keychain to something else, you could use iCloud Keychain to log in to all your sites, and when you do that the third-party solution should be prompting you to store those passwords. So eventually, you have everything in both places and can delete the iCloud entries. But it would be risky as you may miss some.

    I use both iCloud Keychain and 1Password. It really doesn't hurt to use both. When I create a password or log in for the first time I get asked to store it in both places which only takes a second. I used 1Password for years before iCloud Keychain existed, so I have a lot of old data in there. Sometimes poorly-constructed web sites don't trigger one or the other to store passwords, so I end up with the password in only one place. But I don't worry about it too much as it doesn't slow me down if that happens.

    Tom
    5 years ago

    I thought for some reason if Keychain was disabled it would remove the strong Safari password and revert to the weak original one that I used. So one or the other would not be the default Password Manager, and both coexist without conflict?

    5 years ago

    Tom: I don't see how it would revert to something. Yes, both can coexist.

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