How to Recover A Recently Deleted Password or Passkey on Mac?

macos tips
1

I have enabled iCloud Keychain on my MacBook Air, and yesterday, I mistakenly deleted a saved password, but when I needed to access the login information and password today, I realized I had accidentally deleted it. Can I recover the deleted password on my Mac running macOS Sonoma?

2

If you had previously saved your passwords or login credentials to iCloud Keychain, the Mac provides a fantastic option that makes it simple to retrieve them on macOS Sonoma and later. Additionally, Apple provides a strong grace period—you can get your erased password back for up to 30 days!

Steps to recover any recently deleted passwords on the Mac:

  1. Open the  Apple menu and select System Settings.
  2. Scroll down the sidebar choose Passwords and authenticate to access your saved passwords and keychain.
  3. Choose Recently Deleted.
  4. Find the password or login information that you want to retrieve.
  5. Check the box next to it, and tap on the Recover button.
  6. Head to the primary Passwords screen, where you can view the recovered password and login information as usual.

If the Recently Deleted option is not available, then there are either no recently deleted passwords and logins that can be recovered, or you’re running macOS Ventura and older macOS versions.

3

Apple introduced the password recovery feature since macOS Sonoma, On Mac, when you delete a password, it first comes immediately in the “Recently Deleted Folder.” The newly removed passwords are retained there for a maximum of 30 days. Following that, macOS removes them automatically. Therefore, within the stipulated period on macOS 14, you may easily recover deleted passwords. Regarding the process for recovering deleted passwords on Mac, it remains as simple as before.

This feature is available on macOS Sonoma and later versions, and it is also available on iOS 17 and iPadOS 17 or later (From Settings > Passwords > Recently Deleted). When you delete a password from your login information on an earlier version of macOS, it is permanently deleted and cannot be recovered unless you have a backup available such as Time Machine backups.