Safari Passwords Gone After Migration... Help With Time Machine Backups

[Lucky736]

Migrated to a new machine. Safari passwords disappeared.

Checked Keychain Access and the passwords are not in the Keychain, was hoping it was just a Safari issue, no such luck.

What is the best way to restore this from Time Machine. Haven’t had to do something like this in a while and restoring the ~/Library/Keychain folder and its contents yielded nothing.

Thank You in advance for any help. So weird it would do this.

I don’t use iCloud Keychain btw..... though I’m sure it would have made it an easy fix. Lol.

 

[NoBoMac]

https://support.apple.com/guide/keychain-access/copy-keychains-kyca1121/mac

 

[Lucky736]

The other machine has since been wiped hence me asking about Time Machine Backups.
[doublepost=1554571341][/doublepost]Keychain has also changed a bit over time and it’s a bit more complicated than it used to be it seems.

 

[NoBoMac]

Time Machine should not be any different. Restore from TM, say "retain both", follow Apple instructions.

 

[Lucky736]

Didn’t replace the Safari passwords. Anyone with this experience?

 

[Lucky736]

Well here you go....... Thanks Apple.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/5kzw3g/warning_if_you_save_your_passwords_in_safari_10/

So they do not bother to tell people their Time Machine backups are not full backups, nor true snapshots, nor can you actually migrate everything to a new machine over the last while now.

If the UUID is different, IE a different logic board after service or getting a new machine. You are out of luck. Nice.

Way over most people's heads, but no wonder I was banging my head into the wall.

 

[mikzn]

I hope you find a way to get them back - but I have to agree - time machine is great until you actually need to restore the files - lol

CCC or super duper are good back up options

If you have iCloud sync to other devices maybe you can get them back from your iPhone or iPad or other Mac?

 

[Lucky736]

Ironically I’d made a CCC image a few hours before. Don’t use it often but thought I’d start. Re-Imaged the machine with that. Same issue.

As far as the iCloud. A month ago I synced Keychain once. Only time I’ve ever done it. Mac to a Mac. Unchecked the boxes after that. Went with the hopes of retrieving and it asked me for a 4 digit password, when I initially did this it asked me to enable some sort of two-factor authentication so it asked for a 6 digit password and my phone number. Neither Apple nor I could figure out why it is asking for a 4. After the third or fourth try, it no longer asked at all. It became dark grey as if it was enabled, and no passwords. No one checked Update Keychain where it resets it so we are all a little unsure of what happened there.

The saga continues. Oh and I have a half you know what backup solution now with Apple doing stuff like this in their Time Capsule. 330 bucks for something they’ve made obsolete with sketchy undocumented changes to the way they back up.

 

[NoBoMac]

Yeah, it seems to be black magic.

Have done disk swaps with no iCloud Keychain backups with no issues.

Got a new Mac this week, everything came over ok. But, have iCloud turned on. But, ran into issues where Migration Assistant wanted old Mac password. New keyboard layout made for difficult to enter original password (muscle memory did not translate), so, changed that: wiped the Keychain. And after that, was prompted for the old Mac's password.

Don't think any hardware ids enter the equation. At minimum, maybe *nix account uids.

So, yeah, one slip up can mess things up. And why I have a password app synced via cloud across all devices. And export that to an encrypted Excel spreadsheet as last resort.