How to Create a New Keychain on Mac

Do you want to create a new keychain in addition to the default login keychain on your Mac? You can create as many keychains as you want in a macOS system to store your passwords in a pretty straightforward manner.

Keychain is Apple’s built-in password management feature that’s available on both macOS and iOS devices, allowing you to securely store your login information so that you don’t have to remember all your passwords. By default, your Mac creates a keychain for you called “login”, and its password is the same as the macOS user password that you use to log in to your computer.

That being said, you’re certainly not limited to using this default keychain that’s created for you. In fact, you can create as many keychains as you want on your macOS machine and even use any password that you prefer. In this article, we’ll cover exactly how to create a new keychain on a Mac.

How to Create a New Keychain on Mac

You can create a new additional keychain on your macOS system within a matter of seconds. Simply follow the steps below to get started with multiple keychains.

1. Click on the “magnifying glass” icon located at the top-right corner of your desktop to access Spotlight search. Alternatively, you can open Spotlight by pressing Command + Space bar.
   
   
2. Next, type “Keychain” in the search field and open “Keychain Access” from the search results.
   
   
3. Now, click on File in the menu bar and choose “New Keychain” from the dropdown menu, as shown below.
   
   
4. Give a preferred name for your new keychain and click on “Create”.
   
   
5. Now, you’ll be prompted to type in a password for your new keychain. Once you’ve entered the details, click “OK”.
   
   

That’s pretty much all there is to it. The keychain you just created will show up in the left pane of Keychain Access right next to the default login keychain.

Since you cannot change the password for the default login keychain, this additional keychain could come in handy for people who would like to have a keychain with a password that’s different from the macOS user password.

That being said, if you insist on changing the password for the login keychain, you can create a new keychain and make it the default keychain on your system. After you’ve done this, you should be able to change the password for the login keychain by just right-clicking it.

If you recently reset your macOS user password after losing or forgetting it, you will no longer be able to access the existing Keychain data stored on your Mac, as the Keychain password is no longer in sync with the Mac’s password. In such cases, you’ll need to reset your default login Keychain, which deletes all the passwords stored in the Keychain, but allow you to sync up your login and Keychain passwords.

Do you own an iPhone or iPad as well? If so, you might be keen on learning how to properly use iCloud Keychain on iOS devices. Although it works in a slightly different way, the basics remain the same. You can manually add new passwords to Keychain and even edit existing saved passwords to make sure the Keychain data is up to date.

We hope you were able to create multiple keychains with different passwords on your macOS machine. What are your overall thoughts on Keychain as a built-in password management tool for macOS and iOS devices? Do share your valuable opinions and experience in the comments section down below.