How to restore disappeared saved web passwords after changing local user login password

icloudkeychainpasswordSecuritytime-machine

The web passwords saved for a local user "UL" have disappeared after changing that local user's password and I need to recover them.

Here is my specific setup:

  1. I'm working on a MacBook Air M2 running Ventura 13.3.1 (a) ; I call the machine "mbam2" below
  2. Created standard (non-admin) user UL@mbam2 with a local password "foopass"
  3. Logged in to mbam2 as UL@mbam2 using "foopass"
  4. as UL@mbam2, signed into iCloud as [email protected] but did not enable iCloud keychain
  5. Browsed to website ABC.com and saved the password on UL's local keychain
  6. Logged out UL
  7. Logged in to mbam2 as admin and changed UL's local password "foopass" -> "barpass"
  8. Logged in to mbam2 as UL using "barpass" and was prompted for UIC password and previous UL password ("foopass") which I supplied
  9. At that time, I didn't realize something was wrong and I logged out of UL
  10. Upon logging into UL again using "barpass", I realized the web passwords saved locally for UL were gone

I've tried:

  • Time Machine restore – it doesn't seem to restore user accounts to the previous state
  • Actually, Time Machine doesn't even seem to store ~/Library folders containing Keychain files
  • Changing the UL password back to the previous "foopass" password – it didn't restore the passwords
  • Looking in the local Keychain directory – I see old Keychain files, but they don't seem to contain the missing passwords
  • Logging into icloud.com as UIC in case there is any indication of the web passwords; I could not see anything on icloud.com or on appleid.apple.com

Any pointers/suggestions/hints would be greatly appreciated.

Best Answer

After a lot of research, here is what I ultimately did which recovered the passwords I was looking for :

  • Back up the data in the user account manually as admin.
  • Completely delete the user account and delete all its folders as admin.
  • Recover the full account from time machine as admin.
  • Recreate the account while re-using the folders generated from Time Machine AND setting the same local login password as of the time of the Time Machine backup.
  • Login to the account.
  • Observe that the passwords are now there.
  • Manually re-merge data in the manual backup.
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