MacOS – How come Safari tells me “Safari Passwords are locked”

keychainmacospasswordsafari

I recently did a clean install of my Mac (running macOS 10.12.1). After the clean install, I copied over the Library/Keychains folder from my old home directory on my backup drive, to my home directory on my Mac.

When I go to Safari > Preferences > Passwords, it now just says:

Safari Passwords are Locked

To unlock Safari passwords, enter the password for the user “Johnny Appleseed”

(It shows my Mac username instead of Johnny Appleseed, but you get the picture.)

I don’t remember ever creating a password for saved Safari passwords before or after doing the clean install. In fact, I don’t remember using saved passwords in Safari at all. (I use 1Password, so I never felt the need to have Safari save passwords.)

Is this something to do with iCloud Keychain, and/or my copying over of its Library folder? Or a bug? Or something else?

Screenshot of ‘Safari Passwords are Locked’ password preference pane in Safari

Best Answer

Turns out I just had to enter the password for my macOS user account. That showed me the saved password data that Safari had stored (and presumably synced via iCloud), which was mostly records of me clicking on “Never for this website” when asked if I want to save a password.

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