Section 121. Change a User s Password

121. Change a User 's Password

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

117 About Administrative Responsibilities

118 Add a New User

SEE ALSO

122 Delete a User

All users (except those under parental controls) can change their own passwords. This is an essential part of conscientious computer usage. As a rule, you should change your password every six months or so, just as a precaution (and more frequently, such as every 30 days, in a business environment where the information on your computer is more sensitive). And as an Admin user, it will be your task to change users' passwords on a fairly regular basis, often because the users have forgotten them.

To change your own password, you have to re-authenticate to make sure that you are the person who is currently logged in. Making you authenticate as the signed-in user is a precaution against someone sitting down at your login session and changing your password so that you can no longer log in. However, if you're an Admin user, you can change other users' passwords without authenticating.

1.	Open the Accounts Preferences Open the System Preferences application (under the Apple menu); click Accounts to open the Accounts Preferences pane. 121. Change a User's Password
2.	Select the User to Modify From the list of users on the left, select the user whose password you want to change. (If you're changing your own password, click your account name at the top of the list, under My Account .) Then click the Password tab to reveal the name and password configuration pane.
3.	Reset the Password Click the Reset Password button. This opens a sheet that lets you enter a new password for the user, as well as a hint. You are not prompted to authenticate yourself during this procedure.
4.	Enter and Re-enter the New Password After you have authenticated, type your new password in the Password and Verify fields. Click another user or tab to save the new password. If you need help coming up with a good password to use, click the " key " button to open the Password Assistant panel. This is a tool that suggests appropriate passwords for you to use according to several different schemes, including Memorable (for passwords composed of English words cleverly strung together), Letters and Numbers , and Manual . Use the Length slider to select how long you want the suggested password to be; longer passwords are better and more secure, as indicated by the Quality meter below the slider. In Manual mode, type a password of your choice into the Suggestion box, and the Quality meter shows how good the password is; the Tips box offers pointers on how to improve your entered password, such as pointing out whether it's derived from dictionary words, too short, or otherwise too easy to guess. Try to pick a password where the quality meter is long and green rather than short and red, and where the Tips box has no improvements to suggest. NOTE The Password Assistant utility automatically fills in its suggested password into the Password field of the sheet in the Account Preferences pane; however, it doesn't fill it into the Verify field. You have to type that yourself, to make sure the password has been entered correctly and memorized. Bear in mind, importantly, that the user's Keychain password is not changed to the newly set password. The user must open the Keychain Access application (in the Utilities folder) and enter the old password to unlock the Keychain and reset it to the newly set password. See 135 Extract a Password from the Keychain for more information about the Keychain. This does not apply if you're changing your own password; the Keychain password is updated to match your newly entered password. For this reason, it's preferable to have each user reset his password himself, rather than having you do it from within your own login session.

TIP

If you're an advanced Unix user, resist the temptation to change your password using the command-line passwd command; this command does an incomplete job of updating your password in all locations throughout the system, including your Keychain.