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You are here: Home / Mac / How to Bypass Mac Password in 2020

How to Bypass Mac Password in 2020

Last Updated On Wednesday, August 19, 2020 by Moses Gitari Filed Under: Mac

This is a very useful, but somehow also dangerous trick. Useful because you can still access your
Mac
even if you forgot your password. Dangerous because anybody could bypass your Mac password by changing it. As always it depends on the person’s intention. There are good persons, using knowledge and tools for the right things and bad persons misusing knowledge. Be a good person.
in this article, I’ll tell you how to bypass Mac password login and how I discovered the trick. Actually, you do not forget the passwords you use every day. That’s what I thought. One day at work I tried to access my MacBook and I was 100% sure it was the correct password. I tried several different variations. Turned it off. Thought about it. Tried again. Searched in my documents for the passwords. Tried again, but could not access it. Somehow I must have forgotten a tiny part of it, just a special character as ? or : or maybe any of the signs was uppercase. I tried to remember but could not figure it out.
So what to do?
The first idea that crossed my mind, was the apparently easiest solution: just asking the IT guys for help. However, I knew that the team was overloaded due to its small size. So asking for help regarding such an annoying problem was somehow embarrassing, but also stressing for them. Next to asking my co-workers, there was the more unlikely possibility of trying to do it myself. However, I thought that Macbooks have reputable security and it would certainly not be possible to gain access without having any kind of password or a third-party tool. Far from it! Actually, it is a pretty easy and quick solution from which I was really surprised.
You just need to perform a few simple steps, so let’s jump into it and see how to bypass Mac password in 2020. If you just want to try it, but know your password then you should load this guide on another device because the first step involves shutting down your Mac. And I guess you might still need to follow the instructions step by step when executing it. So let’s start by turning off the computer.
Next, turn on your Mac and hold immediately the keys “CMD+R” together until you see the  logo on the screen. The recovery mode of your Mac will launch. It should open a window with the header macOS utilities. On the uppermost part of the screen you can see the top bar with the following menu points as can also be seen on the image below:

Bypass Mac password

Click on Utilities and choose Terminal to launch the Mac Shell Terminal. It should appear a new window that looks like the window below.

Bypass Mac password

Click in the terminal and type resetpassword. A new window will appear with the header Reset password. On this window, you can see all user accounts with their names and profile pictures. Choose the user account for which you intend to change the password. Enter a new password, confirm it and hit save. Boom, a new password has been set. Restart your Mac and login with your new password. It should work. In case it does not, repeat the above steps. So in case you are forgetful, don’t worry. The above solution should help you bypass Mac password in no time.
Considering my slightly embarrassing situation, the above solution was a quite quick and easy fix. So, what lesson can you learn from the story?
As soon as a problem arises, there is already an answer to it. You just have to go out there and find it. I hope you learned something and maybe you were as surprised as I was.
You can achieve the same on Windows or Linux-based systems such as Ubuntu. If you are interested in a similar article for other operating systems, please let me know down in the comments.

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Comments

  1. Tyler Stephen says

    Monday, September 7, 2020 at 9:05 PM

    My understanding of this feature is that it will only work if FileVault disk encryption is turned off. I believe if it is on, the user must input their Apple ID, or recovery key if they opted not to allow their Apple ID to unlock their disk.

    Reply

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