How to: Back up and restore a keychain on your Mac


Instructions

  1. On the source Mac, open Finder.

    The Finder icon highlighted.

  2. In your Mac's menu bar, click Go and choose Go to Folder.

    The "Go" menu being opened in the Mac's menu bar, and then Go to Folder being highlighted.

  3. Type the following path and double-click the path under "Go to".

    ~/Library/Keychains

    Typing "~/Library/Keychains" into the search bar, and the path that appears is highlighted.

  4. Copy the .keychain-db file to a new Mac. You can do this using an external drive or iCloud.

    NOTE: In this example, we are using iCloud for storing the backup. Just click, hold, and drag to the desired location.

    login.keychain-db being saved to iCloud Drive.

  5. On the destination Mac, open the Keychain Access app. One way to do this is to use Spotlight search (command+space bar).

    Keychain Access icon.

  6. In your Mac's menu bar, click File and choose Add Keychain.

    The "File" menu being opened in the Mac's menu bar, and Add Keychain being highlighted.

  7. Browse to the keychain file that you copied and choose Add to import the stored keychain data to your destination Mac.

    "login.keychain-db" is underlined and the "Add" button is highlighted.

Outcome

All of the stored passwords and sign-in information from the original Mac are imported to the destination Mac and ready to use.