How to Fix Apple Mail Not Saving Passwords – Keychain First Aid

Posted by Michael
 
Posted on June 23, 2009
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Recently I was plagued with having to repeatedly enter and re-enter my passwords on some of my email accounts using Apple Mail. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. I would get asked to enter when sending email from a certain account as well as when trying to receive email from a completely different email account. Other email accounts seemed to work just fine. The Mail application just didn’t seem to want to remember my passwords even though I clicked “Remember this password in my keychain” every time.

keychain_icon

It turns out that to fix this problem, there is a very easy thing that you can do. While I cannot guarantee that it will work for everybody, it did work for me just fine. Here are the steps:

  1. Go to your Utilities folder and launch the Keychain Access application
  2. Under the Keychain Access menu, select: Keychain First Aid

    Keychain_First_aid
  3. The Keychain First Aid screen will launch:
    Keychain_verify
  4. Enter in your User Name and Password (this is the name that you use to log into your account or install applications on your Mac). If you haven’t set a password for your account, shame on you! When you are done with this fix, DO IT!
  5. Select Verify and click the Start button to check how all of your various keys check out. If there are any issues, they will be noted in the lower panel. Since I recently repaired my keys, the verification passed, saying “No problems found” (note: I blurred out some of the information):Keychain_verify_2
  6. If any errors appear within the Verification pane (they will be in red I believe), simply select the Repair item and click Start. The repair process will run and hopefully correct any issues. Be sure to review the screen for details.
  7. Do the Verification process again just to be sure.
  8. Quit out of Keychain Access program
  9. Launch your Apple Mail application.
  10. Enter in any passwords that you are prompted for. Be sure to check the “Remember this password in my keychain” box.
  11. Exit Mail.
  12. Re-launch Mail and see if you are prompted for passwords as you were in the past. You shouldn’t be prompted again.

I hope this worked for you. If it did (or did not), please leave a comment as to what did (or did not) work.

Did you find this solution useful? If so:

HTD says: Don’t you just LOVE passwords? I do, when I don’t have to remember them! (GRIN!)

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  • Tim
    Amazing. I've also been putting up with this for about a year. The First Aid thing confuses me as here it seems to be a system to repair the keychain whereas else where it looks like it's the system that unlocks it when you log in (e.g. under Key Chain preferences.

    Thanks!
  • crinkelcut_chip
    THANK GOD FOR THIS ARTICLE... I've been putting up with this for a couple of years now... this has happened since day one for mail for me.. not just on one computer but several... thanks again
  • Thanks for sharing this information with us. I am not preferring to use Apple's mail. But this password saver helps me to use apple's mail.
  • mattnikos
    Hi,
    I found this link after typing 'apple keychain doesn't work'. Thanks for your tips. My issue is that frequently I have to type in the user name and password each time I go to regularly-visited websites. I don't get the 'Do you want Apple (or Keychain, or anything else) to save your password' popup box. I do have some names/passwords that have saved to my keychain, but it doesn't seem to be something that happens each time I visit or revisit a website. I've gone to Safari Preferences and checked the appropriate boxes. Any other tips?
  • videokanaal
    What do you do when this appears in the Keychain Aid?

    Unable to read settings for ~/Library/Keychains/login.keychain
    ....
    Problems were found; you should choose the Repair option to fix them
    Verification failed

    It doesn't repair the problem either after i click the repair button...

    Help?!
  • You should probably launch the Disk Utility and do a Disk verification
    (and repair if you can boot from a different source) as well as a
    repair permissions. It might help. And keep testing the repair option.
  • videokanaal
    Tried all of those, didn't work either... What has worked so far is resetting the sync keychain.
    This will create a new login keychain and rename (not delete) your old one.
    Just be sure you do make a copy of any secure notes you might be keeping!
  • Bill Lapcevic
    One thing I learned was that if your iphone was checking Yahoo mail at the same time your Apple Mail.app was checking it, it would cause a keychain error in Mail.app and force you to try to enter your password...to no avail. I solved that by turning off push mail for my phone.
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