55

Periodically, I'm seeing this keychain dialog pop up:

keychain dialog

I click 'Cancel', then it pops up again, then I click 'Cancel' again, and it goes away for a while. (Maybe an hour or two, I haven't timed it.) I haven't noticed anything not working right.

What's going on here?

If it matters, this is OS X 10.8.2.

Improve this question
5
  • 2
    accountsd is a part of the Accounts Framework. It is probably normal for it to want access to your keychain. Apart from that I don't have a clue, but see the answer below.
    – Harald Hanche-Olsen
    Jan 28, 2013 at 16:25
  • This problem started with me today, after upgrading to Sierra (10.12.6 16G1710 - the 2018 Dec security update). I also have had similar problems with assistantd since upgrading to Sierra.
    – benc
    Dec 11, 2018 at 22:56
  • @HaraldHanche-Olsen It's Mac, not some ancient Unix, and it's a user-facing communicate. It refers to a *d (daemon), I'm 99% sure that it isn't meant to be shown to the end user.
    – cubuspl42
    Aug 12, 2019 at 14:24
  • @cubuspl42 I don't quite get what you're trying to say here. (Note: this was more than six years ago.)
    – Harald Hanche-Olsen
    Aug 12, 2019 at 15:55
  • 1
    I meant that for 99% it's not "normal" as in "by design", but rather a bug. I believe that these communicates are meant by Apple to be human-readable, like "Calendar wants to access the "login" keychain". Anything referring to system daemons is unreadable and not understandable by end-users in my opinion. And sadly this is still occurring on the newest version of macOS (10.14.5).
    – cubuspl42
    Aug 13, 2019 at 8:08

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
12

Open Keychain Access, which can be found in /Applications/Utilities.

Then select Keychain First Aid under Keychain Access.

Enter your password and click to Verify (this is important to find out how is making the problem just in case it comes up again).

If it shows Errors use the Repair function.

In my case it looked like this before the repair.

It found one error and it was fixed after the repair.

enter image description here

Improve this answer
9
  • 3
    How and why does this stop accountsd from asking for access?
    – mmmmmm
    Mar 23, 2013 at 14:51
  • 1
    It's not normal for accountsd to ask. If Keychain Repair doesn't fix this, let us know.
    – Zo219
    Mar 23, 2013 at 21:39
  • p.s. Keep your Keychains handy by checking the box in Preferences to Show Status in Menubar.
    – Zo219
    Mar 23, 2013 at 21:39
  • 71
    Seems Apple has removed the Keychain First Aid option.
    – JohnRos
    Dec 19, 2015 at 6:55
  • 8
    Just open the "Keychain Access", click right on the "login" keychain in the sidebar, select "Change settings for Keychain "login"" and unselect both options "Lock after ..." and "Lock when sleeping".
    – Tom Kraina
    Sep 8, 2016 at 10:55

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .