Local Items keychain recovery after system wipe I recently wiped my Mac and now i need help restoring my old keychain. My website passwords used to be stored in keychain's &quot;Local Items&quot; (no iCloud sync) and I had made a copy of /Library/Keychains folder prior to wiping the Mac. As far as I understand those passwords are saved in /Library/Keychains/UUID/keystore-2.db which should not be accessible on any other system when transferred as it is linked to the original system by the UUID. The &quot;Login&quot; keychain is working fine, it transfers and unlocks without problems.
Found a lot of info online about this topic, but most problems were regarding transferring &quot;Local Items&quot; keychain to a new machine (which is not possible without first exporting to another keychain). My question is whether it is possible to somehow access the old &quot;Local Items&quot; keychain while I still have access to the same machine despite it being wiped and freshly installed? I have the old keychain files and know the unlock passcode.
Seems like the &quot;LocalItems&quot; password database is encrypted with a machine specific key and cannot be opened with any other system. The good news is this key does not change after a complete system wipe (must be some kind of a hardware key). So even if the system is completely wiped, rename the fresh &quot;Keychains&quot; library folder to something like &quot;Keychains_old&quot; and copy your old &quot;Keychains&quot; folder, reboot and voila, everything accessible once again. Might need to input your old keychain unlock code when opening if your current user login code differs from the pre-wipe one.