How to See and Manage Keychain Passwords on Your iPhone or iPad

Keychains were originally developed in the early s for use with an Apple email system called PowerTalk. The idea was that PowerTalk could communicate with many mail servers and online services, so it would use a keychain file to hold user authentication information within the application to automatically and securely log the user into the variety of services. With the creation and release of Mac OS X in the early s, Keychain became part of the operating system and was used to hold much more information.

Here’s how you can see and manage the passwords saved in the Apple’s Keychain manages passwords on your Mac, iPhone, and iPad. Apple · The Logic Behind Apple’s (Leaked) Product Announcement Dates.

Keychain is the password management system in macOS , developed by Apple. It was introduced with Mac OS 8. A Keychain can contain various types of data: passwords for websites , FTP servers , SSH accounts, network shares , wireless networks , groupware applications , encrypted disk images , private keys , certificates , and secure notes.

The keychain file s stores a variety of data fields including a title, URL, notes and password. The default keychain file is the login keychain, typically unlocked on login by the user’s login password, although the password for this keychain can instead be different from a user’s login password, adding security at the expense of some convenience. The keychain may be set to be automatically “locked” if the computer has been idle for a time, and can be locked manually from the Keychain Access application.

When locked, the password has to be re-entered next time the keychain is accessed, to unlock it.