Passwords are annoying, but also a critical part of your security posture. Strong passwords are important, and many organizations have policies which require you to regularly change those passwords. This will eventually lead to you changing your password – and then forgetting it – locking you out of your machine.
The Apple Macbook Pro M1 has some great hardware security, this is good to keep the bad guys out, but it’ll also keep you out if you’ve forgotten your password.
Use pass phrases. Long passwords are better passwords. Use a password manager – like 1Password or Bitwarden. When you change a key password – make sure to put aside time to practice entering that password. I find if I can spend a few hours the afternoon after I change a password – I can lock it into my muscle memory. I tend to keep it written down for those first few hours, but then make sure to securely delete/dispose of that record of the password once it’s baked into my brain/fingers.
For the first time in many years, I blew it. Thankfully my work provides a way with the serial number of the device to get a recovery key if I reach out to our IT support folks. If you don’t have this safety net – make sure you take the time to create a recovery key and then store it somewhere very safe and secure.
The key will look something like this:
RECOVERY KEY: GE62-3HW1-Y7ER-QZCT-2JJ1-6SNK
- Boot into recovery. From a powered off state, press and hold the power button until you boot into recovery mode.
- Connect to a network.
- Open a terminal from the
Utilitiesmenu. - Run the
resetpasswordcommand – follow the prompts which is where you will use that recovery key.