How to delete saved passwords on your Mac computer, either one-by-one or all at once

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How to delete saved passwords on your Mac computer, either one-by-one or all at once
It's easy to delete saved passwords on your Mac.Hollis Johnson/Business Insider

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  • You can delete saved passwords on a Mac by opening the Keychain Access app.
  • Any password that's used to access an application on your Mac can be saved to Keychain Access, which is a password manager built into the computer.
  • You may want to delete a saved password if you no longer use the account or don't want to have that password on file.

When you enter a password into Safari, and your Mac offers to save it, it'll be saving it to an app called Keychain Access. This is useful if you don't want to remember every password you have.

But Keychain Access isn't all automatic — if you don't want to save a password anymore, you can delete it at any time.

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Here's how to delete a password from your Mac.

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How to delete saved passwords on a Mac

Before anything, note that after you delete a password, it can't be recovered — to save it again, you'll need to log in with it the same way you did when you first saved it.

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1. Open Keychain Access. You can find it in your Launchpad, or by searching for it.

How to delete saved passwords on your Mac computer, either one-by-one or all at once
Keychain Access is available in the Lanuchpad by default.Marissa Perino/Business Insider

2. In the pop-up window that appears, you'll find all of your saved passwords. You can click the categories in the left panel to filter the results by password type and other criteria.

If you can't find a password here, it means that it's either not saved, or you saved it to another password manager — like in Google Chrome.

3. When you find the password you want to delete, right-click on it. Select the "Delete" option.

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How to delete saved passwords on your Mac computer, either one-by-one or all at once
Right-click on a saved password to delete it.Marissa Perino/Business Insider

4. You can also select multiple items by holding down the Command key as you click, and then right-clicking to delete them all. Use the Command + A function to select all of your passwords at once.

How to delete saved passwords on your Mac computer, either one-by-one or all at once
Select multiple passwords and right-click to delete the group.Marissa Perino/Business Insider

5. Additionally, you can delete specific details of a saved password. Double-click on a password to open a smaller pop-up for the site you'd like to change.

6. Click the empty check box next to "Show password." This will prompt you to enter your general computer password as an extra security measure.

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7. You can now view your password. Delete it or change it to something else by clicking in the box. You won't be able to click "Save Changes" until a change has been made. You also can't leave the box empty.

How to delete saved passwords on your Mac computer, either one-by-one or all at once
Click the "Show password" box to change the password.Marissa Perino/Business Insider

8. Finally, you can delete a particular application associated with the password. Click the second tab at the top to go to "Access Control."

9. Highlight the application you want to delete and click the minus (-) sign. This will remove it.

Some passwords may have multiple websites associated with them, such as university logins that feature multiple pages. If the password is only associated with one site, removing the site essentially deletes the password from your Keychain as well.

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