Disturbing if true, as it suggests my "everything" backups aren't really full backups at all.<p>I wonder, if you have enabled iCloud keychain, does that provide another way to get your passwords back?<p>Suppose my MacBook is stolen, but I still have my iPhone. Could I use the passwords app on the iPhone to retrieve my passwords. Would that include all of them or only a subset?
This is pretty much how it's suppose to work...
Maybe but this is unexpected if you need to restore from a backup..
It's unexpected to anyone with intuition about how a computer traditionally is supposed to work. As a general principle, as a user, I expect a file on one computer to be usable on another computer. Or, at the very least, if I need to obtain some other thing from the original computer to "unlock" that file, I should be able to do it. The idea of a file that is only usable on a particular computer feels weird.
> As a general principle, as a user, I expect a file on one computer to be usable on another computer.<p>As a general rule, I expect a file on an encrypted disk to be unreadable for anyone who lacks the encryption key(s).<p>> if I need to obtain some other thing from the original computer to "unlock" that file, I should be able to do it.<p>You can export your passwords to a plain text CSV from the original computer.
As a general rule, I expect a file on an encrypted disk to be encrypted with a key derived from a password I provide.
As a general rule, if I'm the user of both disks I expect to have the encryption key(s).
The right way to do that is FDE, where you can't even mount the filesystem to see the files without having the decryption key.
I've done Tahoe-to-Tahoe migration assistant moves between machines in recent months. No issues with login keychain migration.
But that’s not backup restore? I’m thinking Time Machine restore on a new Mac when old one is no longer working. Or when the old one had to be wiped and restored.
Migration Assistant uses the old Mac, which can unlock its login keychain and allow the keychain items to be copied.
Don't backup keys, rotate them.
> This is pretty much how it's suppose to work...<p>No, it's not, and that's not how it ever worked in macOS 26.3 and earlier.<p>This change was introduced in 26.4 for some reason.
I'm more interested by the fact that it apparently <i>didn't</i> work this way before Tahoe.
Does the macoOS login keychain get backed up by Time Machine backups in a way that could restore the keychain if the original machine's Secure Enclave is lost or destroyed?
It sounds like they are using envelope encryption and using the Secure Enclave to derive the row keys each time. Not really any easy way around that except they should provide a tool to export it, TBH. I am guessing they weren’t using envelope encryption before or they were deriving the row keys from the password. This is a secure design but more security usually means less usability these days.
It's always a good idea to plan to hang on to your old machine for a few weeks to ensure everything works properly on the new one. Apple makes that much easier to forget.
This was introduced, unannounced, in macOS 26.4! See my blog post for more information: <a href="https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2026/9/4.html" rel="nofollow">https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2026/9/4.html</a>
And yet if you click export it will gladly print out a plaintext csv with your whole life in passwords. Doesn't even attempt to zip it with password or something.
that seems reasonable, as it is the lowest common denominator for interoperability<p>what would be unfortunate is if it was in some format that couldn't be used by most other systems without extra work, and if the user wasn't able to use their own property to export their own passwords in a different format.
This is good.