When you ever entered a password in a Web page, and then save it in your keychain, you may find yourself relying solely on autofill to enter this password at later times. While the use of autofill is convenient, in instances where you have come to rely on it, you may find yourself forgetting or not even knowing your password.

For instance, when creating an online account you might use Apple’s automatic password creator that creates a random password which is then automatically stored in your keychain, but if at a later date you need to access this account directly without relying on your keychain for autofill of the password, then you may have no idea of what your password is.

This might happen if you are using a device other than the one you used to create your password, such as a public system or that of a friend. In these cases, if you want to find out your password, then you can do so on your original using a couple of quick routines in the Keychain Access utility.



Open Keychain Access Select your “Login” keychain Search for part of the Web site’s URL

This last step should almost immediately show you the keychain entry for your URL. For instance, if you are trying to find your Gmail password, you can search for “gmail” or “gmail.com” and see the password entry. Note that for these entries you will see the username listed, and depending on how you have managed your keychains in the past, you may see multiple entries for one username. These can be from entering the password in Mail or other programs on your Mac, in addition to having Safari save them for autofill.

To recover your password once the keychain entry is located, you have two options:

Copy it, by right-clicking the keychain entry and choosing the option to Copy Password To Clipboard, or press Shift-Command-C. Reveal it, by double-clicking the keychain entry to open it, and then check the box to Show Password.

When you do either of these, you will be required to supply your keychain password (for most people this will be your login password) in the password prompt that appears, and then your password will be copied or revealed. You can now make a note of it, if needed, to