Deleting local Keychain

[Wando64]

After changing my Apple ID email, I had to log the iCloud keychain on all of my devices.
This went smoothly enough for all of them apart from my old Catalina Mac Mini.
On this one, when I try to tick the Keychain on the iCloud page, it tells me that my settings need to be updated for end-to-end encryption and once I press Continue it asks me for different passwords but it never activates iCloud Keychain.
I've read a post from a redit user with the same problem which was resolved by resetting the local keychain. This then allowed him to activate the iCloud keychain and synch from iCloud again.

I am worried that if I "Reset my default keychains" from the Keychain Access preferences it might actually also delete the iCloud keychain and that would be disastrous.
Are you aware of any information relating to delete/reset the local keychain without damaging the iCloud keychain?

 

[Brian33]

Yeah, I worry about unexpected iCloud syncing behavior, too, and I agree caution is warranted. Sorry I don't have any first-hand knowledge to apply. However...

(1) I think that since the Catalina Mac...

never activates iCloud Keychain.

...then resetting the keychain on that Mac shouldn't affect any keychain-related thing in iCloud. It seems logical. So I would lean toward saying it's safe.

(2) You can save a copy of the existing keychain(s) on one or more machines. See Copy Keychains to another Mac. Note that there is a drop-down field at the top to customize the info to your macOS version. It seems you could use this procedure to add the saved keychain back in if everything goes wrong.

 

[Wando64]

Yeah, I worry about unexpected iCloud syncing behavior, too, and I agree caution is warranted. Sorry I don't have any first-hand knowledge to apply. However...

(1) I think that since the Catalina Mac...

...then resetting the keychain on that Mac shouldn't affect any keychain-related thing in iCloud. It seems logical. So I would lean toward saying it's safe.

(2) You can save a copy of the existing keychain(s) on one or more machines. See Copy Keychains to another Mac. Note that there is a drop-down field at the top to customize the info to your macOS version. It seems you could use this procedure to add the saved keychain back in if everything goes wrong.

What I find worrying and confusing is that, event thought the iCloud Keychain sync is deactivated, there is a local Keychain called ‘iCloud’. I suppose this is just a local copy of the real iCloud Keychain but it is unsettling all the same to press OK when I am asked if I want to delete the ‘iCloud’ keychain.
Making a copy from another Mac will offer me some reassurance.