How to unlock imac if you forgot your password. MacID - unlocking (locking) Mac using iPhone or iPad
Anything can happen in life, for example, you suddenly inherited a MacBook or iMac from your great-grandmother. Well, or another computer made by Apple. Everything is fine, you are glad of the happiness that has fallen, the euphoria is gradually replaced by the realization that the password for the computer is unknown, and, in general, there is no one to ask it from. What to do in this case - read on.
Of course, you will do everything described here at one's own risk and there is nothing to complain about later. And of course, it is understood that such procedures will only be carried out if you actually do not know the password to your great-grandmother’s MacBook.
You can describe the process from the point of view of a command line guru, but this is inappropriate, since your great-grandmother’s MacBook is apparently your first MacBook, so it’s as simple and clear as possible about the main thing. How to get the most important and important password - the Administrator password!
To start:
- Command+S, copy-paste doesn't work here!
- Wait until the lines of code run through, then carefully enter the command. This spell will do file system Readable and writable:
- Look for your great-grandmother's short system nickname:
- Kill your great-grandmother's Keychain. Please note: instead of “nickname” you substitute the one you found with the previous command, this is important!
- Restart your Mac:
As a result, the next time you boot, OS X will create a new Keychain, and great-grandmother will have nothing to do with it.
Now let's get down to the most important and interesting thing - we take control of the Mac into our own hands, resetting the most important and important Administrator password. There are a couple of options for how to do this, you can choose any one. And, if you’re not tired yet, let’s continue.
1. Use a bunch of commands:
- Boot into Single-User mode: when loading, immediately hold down Command+S, copy-paste doesn't work here!
- Wait until the lines of code run through, then carefully enter, the spell will make the file system readable and writable:
- Manually open the Open Directory - the thing that manages all the accounts on the computer (on Mac OS 10.6 and earlier this thing will not work - it’s simply not there):
- Again, you are looking for the short system nickname of your great-grandmother, or the account whose password you need to reset. Remember:
- Here you replace the “nickname” with the name obtained by the previous command:
If something like this suddenly pops up, don’t be alarmed, just ignore it:
Launchctl: Couldn’t stat (“/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.DirectoryServicesLocal.plist”): No such file or directory nothing found to load
- Enter New Password!
- Restart your Mac:
2. Use three times fewer commands:
OS X is very easy to cheat. For example, make the system think that they haven’t thought about installing it yet. To do this, you just need to delete one file, it says that the installation of OS X is complete, let him “think differently,” as Jobs bequeathed!
- Again, boot into “Single-user mode”: when loading, immediately hold down Command+S, copy-paste doesn't work here!
- Wait until the lines of code run through, then carefully enter the command, the spell will make the file system readable and writable:
- Delete the same file:
Restart your Mac:
As a result, you get a brand new Mac that looks like it came straight from the store. Set up your account again, just like after installing the system. Moreover, the data of other accounts (and great-grandmother’s too) will remain untouched. Unless you enter a username that is already in the system.
3. Use “Recovery Mode”
- Boot into “Recovery Mode”: when loading, immediately press and hold Alt (Option), here we need a disk called “Recovery”
- Through the “Utilities” menu, select the “Terminal” program
- Enter the command, it will bring up a dialog box to reset the necessary and important Administrator password:
- In the dialog box that appears, select boot disk, account, enter a new password with confirmation and select a question to recover it
- Click “Save” and reboot using the corresponding “Apple” menu item. Great-grandmother would be proud of you!
In fact, it is not clear: impenetrable OS X and such “failures” in security! Such things can easily help attackers take over the contents of any Mac. Although, on the other hand, if it were not possible to access the Mac bypassing the Administrator account, then, say, having lost or forgotten the password, without installation disk You can say goodbye to all the information at your fingertips forever. But this is only if the great-grandmother did not enable FileVault disk encryption - none of the above methods will work then.
Let's say you forgot your Mac password. Or you just bought a Macintosh secondhand, and the previous owner locked the computer. There are several elegant solutions to this problem if you don't have a Mac OS X installation DVD. (The easiest way to reset your password is by using the DVD).
This topic may have gotten old, but it raises an important question that people ask all the time. I don’t want to think that any user who happens to be near your computer can theoretically gain access to it in a few minutes. And before you decide that Mac OS X has a serious vulnerability, I hasten to reassure you: any operating system, be it Windows, Linux or Mac, can be hacked in a couple of minutes if you know what to do. A hacker sitting at your computer can bypass any security measures.
The information presented below is taken from the Internet with the goal of helping people legally reset their password on Mac OS X. We have collected various methods found by the Mac community on MacDigger for your convenience. I think the instructions will be useful for both ordinary users Macs and system administrators alike.
Resetting your password in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
- Turn on or restart your Mac.
- During the greeting (or the gray screen if you turned off the annoying gong), hold down Command+S on your keyboard to boot into single-user mode.
- fsck-fy
- Write mount -uw / and press Enter.
- Further launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.DirectoryServices.plist and press Enter.
- Enter ls /Users and press Enter. The command will show a list of all users on the computer - useful if you don’t know or don’t remember.
- In line dscl. -passwd /Users/username password replace “username” with your username (see above), and instead of “password”, enter the code combination of characters and press Enter.
- reboot.
Resetting your password on Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger
- Turn on or restart your Mac.
- Write on the line sh /etc/rc and press Enter.
- Enter passwd username and replace “username” with the short username of the account for which you are going to reset the password.
- Enter your desired password and press Enter.
- To reboot, run the command reboot.
Trick Mac and create a new user.
- Turn on or restart your Mac.
- During the welcome screen (or the gray screen if you've turned it off), hold down Command+S on your keyboard to boot into single-user mode.
- The step is optional, but it is useful to go through it, because in this way you will check for errors on the hard drive. In the line enter fsck-fy and press Enter. Wait until the disk check is completed.
- Write mount -uw / and press Enter.
- Further rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone and press Enter.
- Now shutdown -h now and press Enter.
The third method requires some clarification. Instead of replacing the password as in the first two methods, this is, in its own way, deception of the operating system. The trick makes the system think that it has not been launched yet. This means that after you restart your Mac, you will have to go through all the settings and registration steps again. Don't worry, all the information on your Mac is safe and sound. Go through all the steps, but at the end, refuse to migrate your data to your Mac.
After that, log into your Mac with a new administrator account and go to Settings Panel -> Accounts. You may need to unlock the lock in the lower left corner before making changes. In the left column you should see the original account(s). Click on the desired account and turn it into a standard account (uncheck “Allow this user to administer the computer”) and change the password. Now you can log into your computer under this account and gain access to all your files and programs. You can log in again under the administrator account and check the “Allow” checkbox. This user should administer this computer" in System Preferences to give administrative rights to the user.
That's it. As always, remember that the combination of single-user mode (or superuser mode) and Terminal is extremely dangerous and can lead to big problems if you make mistakes.
If you have a password set in Keychain Access, you most likely need to reset it too. You can do this by selecting “input” under Keychain Access on the left and clicking Delete from the Edit menu. You will lose all Keys and add them again.
Despite the ambiguous title, the article will not be about hacking accounts in Mac OS X (you can read about this on specialized Internet resources if you wish). On the contrary, today we will consider a situation where, due to prevailing circumstances, the user forgets the password to log into the system and it is not possible to recover it.
RESET VIA APPLE ID
First, let's note that in such a situation, Apple now offers reset your password using your Apple ID. This is an exclusive feature of OS X Lion, and you can enable it in two ways - either during the initial system setup, or in the “Accounts” console in System settings.
After several unsuccessful attempts to enter your password, you will see a pop-up window on the login screen asking you to enter your Apple ID. The system will honestly warn you that it will reset your password, but the Keychain, where all the passwords you previously entered are stored in encrypted form, will remain locked until you remember the old password. Since the old Keychain can no longer be used, the system will create a new one.
RESETING YOUR PASSWORD IN SINGLE USER MODE
If you don’t have the installation DVD at hand and you can’t remember the password, the following password reset method may help.
After turning on the Mac, while the welcome screen is displayed, press and hold the key combination Cmd+S until the computer boots into single-user mode and we see the command line. Essentially, working in command line Not much different from working in the Terminal, so users who already have experience with this application will not find the proposed commands unfamiliar. Do not forget that after each entered command you should press the key RETURN.
launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.DirectoryServices.plist
The following command displays a list of all users on this Mac:
Now the most interesting and important thing - we enter the command in which username replace it with the username for which the password should be changed, and instead password indicate the desired new password.
dscl. -passwd /Users/username password
The final step is to restart the computer using the following command:
METHOD NUMBER THREE
This is an even funnier way to fool Mac OS X and force the creation of a new user on the system, bypassing all passwords.
As in the previous method, hold down the keys Cmd+S, boot into single-user mode. Then enter the following two commands, not forgetting to click on after entering each command RETURN:
rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
To restart the Mac, we use a command slightly different from the one we used in the previous version:
As a result of the actions we took, we made the system think that it had never been launched before. As a result, after a reboot we will have to go through all the steps of setting up and registering the system again. The information on the hard drive will remain safe and sound in any case, so feel free to go through all the setup steps, not forgetting to refuse data migration at the very end.
After the reboot, log into the system under a new account and, opening Settings panel, go to the section Accounts. In the screenshot we see the name in the list of users Master(the old account for which we want to reset the password) and Anjul(the new admin account we created in single-user mode).
In order to unlock the list and be able to make changes, click on the lock and enter the account password in a new window Anjul, under which we logged into the system.
After access is obtained, click on the old account Master and press Reset the password. In the next window, we indicate a new password for this account and, if desired, a hint so that you can remember it if it is forgotten again.
Now you can restart your Mac and log in using your old account Master, and delete the new one, which has become unnecessary.
That's all. We hope that our advice will help you restore access to your account. However, we wish that you don’t need the tips described above after all :)
This happens to every Mac user at some point - you create a new password and forget it to log into your Mac. In this article, I will provide two methods to reset your password on Mac OS X.
Method 1: Reset your password inMacOS with helpOS X Installer(Installer).
If you have the Mac OS X Installer disk on hand, it's incredibly easy to change your account administrator password. Simply insert the CD into your Mac and hold down the "C" key while it boots. This will launch the Mac OS X Installer. If the computer in question does not have a CD drive, you can either hold down the Option button while booting and select “Recovery Partition,” or save the Installer to a flash drive.
Once this is done, feel free to head to Utilities and select “Reset Password”.
A window will appear prompting you to select the hard drive on which OS X is installed; select the required drive and user for which you need to reset the password in Mac OS. Enter a new password for the user and feel free to click the save button. It is done!
After restarting your computer, you can use the new password to log in.
Method 2: TrickOS X go to boot your computer to reset your password inMac OS X.
If you don't have an Installer disk, you can achieve the same result as Method 1 using a little command line tweaking.
Boot your computer by holding “Command” + “S” while the startup tune plays.
When your Mac switches to Single User Mode, you need to select the hard drive you want. In most cases this will be the system drive, which can be mounted as “/”. The command below will do this for you:
Next we need to delete the file that tells OS X that the installation has already been completed:
Now we need to restart the Mac using the command:
Once it loads, everything will look like it did the first time after installation. You'll see a welcome screen, so skip the first two windows.
When you get to the window that asks you if you have a Mac, make sure you select "Don't move my data now" as we don't move information.
Once you get to the window where you enter your Apple ID, hold “Command” + “Q” to skip the remaining pop-ups. Click “Skip” if necessary.
Now you must create new account administrator. You can call it whatever you want, since you need it in order to get into the OS and system parameters.
Anything can happen in life, for example, you suddenly inherited a MacBook or iMac from your great-grandmother. Well, or another production computer. Everything is fine, you are glad of the happiness that has fallen, the euphoria is gradually replaced by the realization that the password for the computer is unknown, and, in general, there is no one to ask it from. What to do in this case - read on.
Of course, you will do everything described here at one's own risk and there is nothing to complain about later. And of course, it is understood that such procedures will only be carried out if you actually do not know the password to your great-grandmother’s MacBook.
You can describe the process from the point of view of a command line guru, but this is inappropriate, since your great-grandmother’s MacBook is apparently your first MacBook, so it’s as simple and clear as possible about the main thing. How to get the most important and important password - the Administrator password!
To start:
Killing your great-grandmother’s “Bind of Keys”
- Command+S, copy-paste doesn't work here!
- Wait until the lines of code run through, then carefully enter the command. This spell will make the filesystem readable and writable:
- Look for your great-grandmother's short system nickname:
- Kill your great-grandmother's Keychain. Please note: instead of “nickname” you substitute the one you found with the previous command, this is important!
- Restart your Mac:
As a result, the next time you boot, OS X will create a new Keychain, and great-grandmother will have nothing to do with it.
Now let's get down to the most important and interesting thing - we take control of the Mac into our own hands, resetting the most important and important Administrator password. There are a couple of options for how to do this, you can choose any one. And, if you’re not tired yet, let’s continue.
1. Use a bunch of commands:
- Boot into Single-User mode: when loading, immediately hold down Command+S, copy-paste doesn't work here!
- Wait until the lines of code run through, then carefully enter, the spell will make the file system readable and writable:
- Manually open the Open Directory - the thing that manages all the accounts on the computer (on Mac OS 10.6 and earlier this thing will not work - it’s simply not there):
- Again, you are looking for the short system nickname of your great-grandmother, or the account whose password you need to reset. Remember:
- Here you replace the “nickname” with the name obtained by the previous command:
If something like this suddenly pops up, don’t be alarmed, just ignore it:
Launchctl: Couldn’t stat (“/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.DirectoryServicesLocal.plist”): No such file or directory nothing found to load
- Enter a new password!
- Restart your Mac:
2. Use three times fewer commands:
OS X is very easy to cheat. For example, make the system think that they haven’t thought about installing it yet. To do this, you just need to delete one file, it says that the installation of OS X is complete, let him “think differently,” as Jobs bequeathed!
- Again, boot into “Single-user mode”: when loading, immediately hold down Command+S, copy-paste doesn't work here!
- Wait until the lines of code run through, then carefully enter the command, the spell will make the file system readable and writable:
- Delete the same file:
Restart your Mac:
As a result, you get a brand new Mac that looks like it came straight from the store. Set up your account again, just like after installing the system. Moreover, the data of other accounts (and great-grandmother’s too) will remain untouched. Unless you enter a username that is already in the system.
3. Use “Recovery Mode”
- Boot into “Recovery Mode”: when loading, immediately press and hold Alt (Option), here we need a disk called “Recovery”
- Through the “Utilities” menu, select the “Terminal” program
- Enter the command, it will bring up a dialog box to reset the necessary and important Administrator password:
- In the dialog box that appears, select boot disk, account, enter a new password with confirmation and select a question to restore it
- Click “Save” and reboot using the corresponding “Apple” menu item. Great-grandmother would be proud of you!
In fact, it is not clear: impenetrable OS X and such “failures” in security! Such things can easily help attackers take over the contents of any Mac. Although, on the other hand, if it were not possible to access the Mac bypassing the Administrator account, then, say, having lost or forgotten the password, without an installation disk at hand, you can say goodbye to all information forever. But this is only if the great-grandmother did not enable FileVault disk encryption - none of the above methods will work then.
We tell you how to protect your data.
Have you forgotten the administrator password to turn on your Mac? No problem, Apple has a solution. In just a couple of minutes you can easily reset your password and set a new one...
But this can be done by ANY stranger who gains access to your Mac.
Let's understand this feature of OS X.
How to reset MacBook password
Let's be optimistic and decide that it is you, and not someone else, who needs to change the password on your MacBook.
So, after unsuccessful attempts to log into your account, the only solution left is to reset your password.
1. We need to turn off the laptop. While at the password entry screen, hold down the Power key until your MacBook turns off. Now turn on the MacBook and hold down the key combination Command+R. Hold it until a thin loading bar appears.
2. We're in Recovery Mode. Opening Utilities -> Terminal.
3. Enter the following command resetpassword and press Enter.
4. In the window that opens, enter a new password and, if necessary, a hint.
5. Just restart your Mac and sign in with a new password.
The system will immediately prompt you to update the password for Keychains, but without knowing the previous password, you will not be able to do this.
After loading, OS X will begin to require you to enter your old keychain password. If you don't know it, it's best to create a new one A bunch of keys(after all, you probably remember the passwords for your Apple ID account and other services).
How to protect yourself from data theft
Until you enter the password for the old keychain or create a new one, the system behaves extremely strangely. Working with applications is very difficult - they freeze, slow down and stop responding.
However, copying the necessary information in this mode to an external drive is as easy as shelling pears. And if your Mac has confidential information, you will undoubtedly notice her disappearance, but it will be too late.
Post navigation
This happened a little less than two...Despite the ambiguous title, the article will not be about hacking accounts in Mac OS X (you can read about this on specialized Internet resources if you wish). On the contrary, today we will consider a situation where, due to prevailing circumstances, the user forgets the password to log into the system and it is not possible to recover it.
RESET VIA APPLE ID
First, let's note that in such a situation, Apple now offers reset your password using your Apple ID. This is an OS X Lion exclusive feature, and you can enable it in two ways - either during the initial system setup, or in the Accounts panel in System Preferences.
After several unsuccessful attempts to enter your password, you will see a pop-up window on the login screen asking you to enter your Apple ID. The system will honestly warn you that it will reset your password, but the Keychain, where all the passwords you previously entered are stored in encrypted form, will remain locked until you remember the old password. Since the old Keychain can no longer be used, the system will create a new one.
RESETING YOUR PASSWORD IN SINGLE USER MODE
If you don’t have the installation DVD at hand and you can’t remember the password, the following password reset method may help.
After turning on the Mac, while the welcome screen is displayed, press and hold the key combination Cmd+S until the computer boots into single-user mode and we see the command line. In fact, working in the command line is not much different from working in the Terminal, and therefore for users who have already had experience with this application, the proposed commands will not seem unfamiliar. Do not forget that after each entered command you should press the key RETURN.
mount -uw /
launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.DirectoryServices.plist
The following command displays a list of all users on this Mac:
ls /Users
Now the most interesting and important thing - we enter the command in which username replace it with the username for which the password should be changed, and instead password indicate the desired new password.
dscl. -passwd /Users/username password
The final step is to restart the computer using the following command:
reboot
METHOD NUMBER THREE
This is an even funnier way to fool Mac OS X and force the creation of a new user on the system, bypassing all passwords.
As in the previous method, hold down the keys Cmd+S, boot into single-user mode. Then enter the following two commands, not forgetting to click on after entering each command RETURN:
mount -uw /
rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
To restart the Mac, we use a command slightly different from the one we used in the previous version:
shutdown -h now
As a result of the actions we took, we made the system think that it had never been launched before. As a result, after a reboot we will have to go through all the steps of setting up and registering the system again. The information on the hard drive will remain safe and sound in any case, so feel free to go through all the setup steps, not forgetting to refuse data migration at the very end.
After the reboot, log into the system under a new account and, opening Settings panel, go to the section Accounts. In the screenshot we see the name in the list of users Master(the old account for which we want to reset the password) and Anjul(the new admin account we created in single-user mode).
In order to unlock the list and be able to make changes, click on the lock and enter the account password in a new window Anjul, under which we logged into the system.
After access is obtained, click on the old account Master and press Reset the password. In the next window, we indicate a new password for this account and, if desired, a hint so that you can remember it if it is forgotten again.
Now you can restart your Mac and log in using your old account Master, and delete the new one, which has become unnecessary.
A few years ago we gave a Mac Mini to our parents. A reliable workhorse for the home. Then I created an administrator account, installed all possible programs, and configured it. Then I created three standard accounts for relatives, so that they wouldn’t mess with the system. Everyone used their account and everyone was happy.
But recently I needed to update the system, add applications, change some settings. Surprisingly, the administrator password was not saved anywhere and was conveniently forgotten. The funny thing is that the vaunted Mac OS allows you to reset without any difficulty forgotten password administrator...
It’s one thing to read the instructions, another thing to put it all into practice. After searching on Google, I was convinced that most of the instructions boil down to one operation, which I will describe in detail. The rest of the advice is either too primitive or outdated... I carried out all the steps on the latest Mac OS 10.11.6.
Methods that do not need detailed description:
- remember by hint, if it is installed.
- reset the administrator password from another administrator account. This rarely happens, because it is not at all safe to have two administrators on a computer. System Settings->Users and Groups. Well, there you can do whatever you want under the admin account.
And now general method, if you forgot your password, the hint does not help and you have one administrator account:
Step 1. Reboot the computer. When turning it on, press the CMD (command) + R keys. Hold until the special mode loads.
Step 2. A window will appear with a choice of 4 options. But you don't need this window! Open Utilities->Terminal in the top menu.
Step 3. In the terminal, type resetpassword! And a window will open on the right in which you need to select an account and enter a new password twice, as well as a hint (optional).
Step 4. Reboot the computer.
Resetting your keychain
After resetting my password, I kept getting a message related to “keychain”. Allegedly, this password is needed for 4-5 services. Messages about this could not be closed and they opened in a circle.
Not only did I not know the password, but also what Apple ID was used during registration. This is the situation. Therefore, I had to create a new keychain.
In a new window I saw an offer to enter. Now you just need to enter the password for the Apple ID specified in the window to log into Mac OS.
Note that even this password can be recovered by clicking the “Forgot” button. And you can restore it by email. If the mail worked on a Mac, then the letter arrives there.
Password reset protection
This way you can reset the administrator password, keychain, account, with a minimum of information. What to do to prevent this from happening? The only solution I found was to enable the built-in FileVault encryption.
System Settings->Protection and Security->Enable FileVault
Well, in the next window you need to select one of two items:
- Allowing my iCloud account to remove protection from my drive is less secure, but it will be easier for you to recover the password yourself, even if you suddenly forget it.
- Create a recovery key and do not use my account iCloud recording- most safe way, but in this case you need to store the recovery key somewhere in a safe place. If you lose that too, the data on your Mac will be lost.
This is what the recovery key looks like:
These are the pies! :) Good luck to all. Don't forget your administrator password.
