- #How to find mac os x administrator password how to#
- #How to find mac os x administrator password install#
- #How to find mac os x administrator password password#
#How to find mac os x administrator password password#
OS X: Apple ID can be used to reset your user account password Because of that, you'll find yourself re-entering all the passwords that were stored in your old, now inaccessible Keychain. A new one will be created and unlocked with your new password. As a result, when you log back in, you'll be asked to reset your Keychain. If you forget your password, you no longer have access to that Keychain. The OS X Keychain is where all your passwords are kept securely.
From there you can manage the rest of of the users if necessary with System Preferences > Users & Groups. If all went well, when the Mac restarts normally, you'll be able to log in to the administrator account with the new password you defined in step # 5 above. Select OS X Utilities > Quit OS X Utilities. What you'll see after you enter "resetpassword"Ĭlick on the 1) volume of interest, 2) select the desired user account name in the popup. In the terminal window type the following and hit Return. You won't have to do anything exotic on the Unix command line.Ĥ. What you see after booting into Recovery Partition.ĭon't worry. Instead, you'll go to the Menu bar at the top and select Utilities > Terminal. When booting is complete, you'll see a window of "OS X Utilities." You won't do anything there. This will force the Mac to boot into OS X on the Recovery Partition that was created when you installed OS X 10.7 or later.ģ. Soon, you'll see the Apple logo and spinning gear (or progress bar in Yosemite). Right after you hear the chime, press and hold the Command and the R keys for a few seconds, then release.
#How to find mac os x administrator password how to#
If it's locked up, see: "Frozen: How to Force the Restart of a Mac."Ģ. In this scenario, it's assumed that the administrator is you, and you know your account name but forgot the password.
It's no longer being updated by Apple, but if you're still using Snow Leopard or older, it still works.)Īs a reminder, the person who first installed OS X on a Mac (or set it up out of the box) is the administrator. It's discussed in this Apple support article # PH6317.
#How to find mac os x administrator password install#
(The older method, mentioned in the introduction above, uses the install disc for OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and previous. This is a hidden partition on your boot drive introduced with OS X 10.7 Lion, so the technique I'll describe works with OS X 10.7 Lion, 10.8 Mountain Lion, OS X 10.9 Mavericks and OS X 10.10 Yosemite. If the techniques above aren't available, a very neat, simple way to reset the administrator password is to make use of the OS X Recovery Partition. If you can't do that, on to the next technique. If you've previously set up your Mac with two administrator accounts, highly recommended, you can use the second admin account to login in and reset the password for the first administrator whose password has been forgotten.
One administrator has the power to reset the password of another administrator. If, heaven forbid, Apple's system is hacked, your admin password could be compromised. On to the next technique. One reason to deselect the box is extreme security. However, if you deselected that box, and later forgot your password, you're out of luck. Enter your Apple ID and password, then click "Reset Password" to proceed. Click the arrow-in-a-circle icon to bring up the "Reset Password" dialog. If you incorrectly enter your account password at the login window three times, a message appears stating "If you forgot your password, you can reset it using your Apple ID". Now, assuming you've forgotten your password, according to Apple. If you did that, the box in System Preferences > Users & Groups was set. When you first set up your Mac or upgraded the OS, The Setup Assistant will ask if you want to allow your Apple ID to reset the user (admin) password. For the sake of completeness, I'll reference those methods at the end of this article. Some of them are rather Unix-geeky and can make a novice user nervous. To be clear, there are several technical ways to reset the administrator password on a Mac. Nowadays, there is no install disc provided with OS X, and so an alternative method is necessary. If a user forgot the administrator password, perhaps the simplest way (of several) would be to use that disc to set a new administrator password and regain control of the Mac. In the early years of OS X, the Mac operating system was sold on a DVD.