After the well deserved x-mas break (I didnt even open the lid of my work MacBook Pro for weeks), I started experiencing problems with Keychain access.
After a few days I got irritated when I noticed that applications where not able to access the stored passwords from the Keychain.
As an example:
- Chrome no longer autofills my password when logging in to gmail
- Microsoft Remote Desktop failed to load/store passwords
- etc
Most disturbing was that when I tried to Add a new password to the login keychain directly, this failed with the message "you failed to provide the necessary administrator authorization"
I first thought the problem was related to iCloud Keychain, but this proved not to be the case. I found out that iCloud Keychain only is used by apple programs, such as safari. Third party applications use the normal "login" Keychain.
Once I understood this, The solution was simple enough:
- Open Keychain Access
- Select the "login" Keychain
- Secondary click the "login" item in the list and select "Lock Keychain 'login' "
- Alternatively click the (unlocked) padlock above the list.Secondary click the
- "login" item in the list and select "Lock Keychain 'login' "
- Secondary click the "login" item in the list again, and select "Unlock Keychain 'login'"
- Alternatively click the (locked) padlock above the list.
- You will be prompted to enter the Password of the Keychain, this password usually is the same as the password of the account you used to login.
