How do I view an email password my Mac has previously saved?
Customers occasionally ask if there’s any way to view an email password that has been saved on their Mac computer (possibly because they want to enter that same password on a new device, or use it on our webmail pages).
For security reasons, we don’t store the plaintext passwords on our systems at all, but the “Keychain Access” program on your Mac may have done so, especially if you use the Apple “Mail” program to read mail on your Mac.
To see if the password is available, first open the “Keychain Access.app” program on your Mac. You can do that by clicking the Spotlight icon (a magnifying glass) in the menu bar:
Then typing Keychain Access in the window:
And then pressing “enter” on your keyboard.
(This Apple page explains more about Spotlight, and this Apple page explains more about Keychain Access).
Opening Keychain Access will show a window like this:
When you see that window, make sure that login is clicked in the left column, and that All Items is clicked along the top.
Then search for mail.tigertech.net in the top-right (as shown in the red circle above). That will probably show a list of one or more matches. (You can also try typing your email address, but that might also show you unrelated services that use the same email address.)
If you double-click on a match, a window will appear with a “Show password” box you can check, like this:
If you click Show password, your Mac will ask you to type your keychain password, which is the same password you use to unlock your Mac when you turn it on. It will then show you the email password, like this:
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