How to Reset Forgotten Admin Password on Mac

How to Reset Forgotten Admin Password on Mac

In this article we will see that how to reset admin passwords for all accounts on macOS Mojave 10.14, macOS Sierra, OSX 10.11 El Capitan, OSX 10.10 Yosemite, OSX 10.9 Mavericks and OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion including admin and standard user accounts can be reset and changed when booted from the Recovery Partition on macOS.

Boot into Recovery Partition

Reboot into the Recovery Drive by choosing the ‘Apple‘ menu > Restart, hold down the ‘command’ + ‘r’ keys on the keyboard during the start up process, when you see the start up screen you can let go. When the machine boots eventually you will see the macOS or OS X Utilities screen.

Go to the Utilites menu and select Terminal






At the prompt type ‘resetpassword’



This launches the Reset Password screen,  you need to reset select the user account then add and confirm the new password and click save, you get a confirmation screen and details about the keychain account.



Go to the Apple Menu and click Restart to boot back to the normal hard drive and the new password will take effect immediately.

If you are using macOS Mojave the screen you see is a little friendlier, just select the account you want to reset the password on and follow the instructions.