OS X Lion: Allow applications to access your keychain

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Allow applications to access your keychain

Applications that use passwords require your permission to retrieve your password from Keychain Access. An application may present a dialog asking you to confirm access to your keychain. The message may contain several options:

Deny: Prevent the application from retrieving the password from your keychain. You need to enter the password manually.

Allow Once: Grant Access to your keychain this time only. You’ll be asked again the next time the application needs to access the password.

Always Allow: Allow the application to always retrieve the password without asking.

If you want to allow an application, such as Mail, to always access your keychain without asking for a password, select “Always Allow.”

  1. Open Keychain Access, located in the Utilities folder in Launchpad.
  2. If you don’t see keychains in the left column, choose View > Show Keychains.
  3. Select a keychain, from the Keychains list. The application’s keychain would probably be in your login keychain.
  4. Double-click the password in the Keychain window, and then click Access Control.
    • To allow all applications access to this password, select “Allow all applications to access this item.”

    • To control access to this password, select “Confirm before allowing access.”

    • To require the keychain password instead of the application password, select “Ask for Keychain password.”

    • To add individual applications that can access this password, click Add (+), and then navigate to the application you want to add.

  5. Click Save Changes.
Last Modified: Oct 31, 2013
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