What Is Keychain Access on macOS

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∟macOS Certificate Stores and Keychain Access

∟What Is Keychain Access on macOS

This section provides a quick introduction on Keychain Access, which is an administration tool on macOS computers store and manage passwords, private keys and PKI certificates.

What Is Keychain Access? - Keychain Access is an administration tool on macOS computers that is used mainly to store your passwords and account information and reduces the number of passwords you have to remember and manage.

When you access a website, email account, network server, or other password-protected item, you may be given the option to remember or save the password. If you choose to save the password, it's saved in your keychain so you don't have to remember or type your password every time.

But you can also use Keychain Access to manage certificates, which are issued by trusted organizations to validate websites, digital documents, and other web-based materials as shown below:

Keychain Access - Certificate Store on macOS

Note that certificates and other security information are stored into 4 different keychains: login, Local Items, System, System Roots. Each keychain has 5 storage categories:

Passwords - Stores passwords for login to applications or websites.
Secure Notes - Stores any sensitive information like your bank account numbers.
My Certificates - Stores your certificates that identifies you or your computer.
Keys - Stores private keys that used to create your certificates.
Certificates - Stores certificates that identifies others.