Has anyone else noticed that with the release of Sequoia 15.4, password-protecting your Time Machine drive is no longer an option? I discovered this when I tried disconnecting the Time Machine drive with Finder, which failed under the final 15.4 beta. With the release of the 15.5 beta, you can now disconnect the drive, but when you reconnect the drive to the computer, it won’t ask for the password, it simply remounts the drive as a standard external device.
How is this a good idea? If someone makes off with my external Time Machine drive, can they take all of my information and data?
I know that many of us have backup routines that include Time Machine. Is anyone else concerned about this and wondering what Apple was thinking?
Are you using an APFS or HFS+ formatted Time Machine disk?
I’m not seeing this on 15.4. My backup disk is formatted as encrypted APFS, and it continues to mount. I don’t get asked for the drive’s password - I have the password for the drive stored in the Keychain. And it remains encrypted.
I have seen where at times the Time Machine drive will show a “standard” disk icon. It will switch to the Time Machine disk icon eventually. The drive is still encrypted, though, and my backups are still there.
What does “Get Info” say about the drive when this happens?
Here is the System Settings dialog box for Time Machine with the password option nowhere to be found. Nothing on the configuration side changed which would have precipitated the password setting no longer being available.
As for your comments on the drive icon, I agree that sometimes it displays incorrectly as a standard external drive but will change to a Time Machine graphic if just left alone.
It looks to me like your Time Machine drive is encrypted and has mounted successfully.
I don’t think I’d worry about anyone accessing information on your drive if it fell into the wrong hands. Since this is full disk encryption, data is decrypted when read from the disk, and encrypted before it’s written. The data on the drive remains encrypted at all times. Nor would I worry that the encryption password is stored on the drive itself. (that could be verified by attaching the drive to another Mac – it should ask for a password to mount the volume).
I also notice the lack of a password entry in the Time Machine preferences. But I honestly can’t remember if in recent macOS versions it was there. The first time I set up the APFS Time Machine volume with an encrypted password, subsequent boots of my Mac would ask for the volume’s password. At that point I requested that the password be saved in the Keychain. After that, I get no request for the Time Machine volume password when rebooting.
I’ve just dismounted my Time Machine drive (and powered it off). Powering the drive back on will automatically mount the drive - but then again, I have the password saved in my keychain.
You must be correct. I found the entry under System Roots/{my computer name}/TimeMachine Encryption Password. I agree that it now logs on automatically when it is remounted.
Nonetheless, that is still a change from 15.3 (which allowed the password to be set in the Time Machine dialog box in System Settings) and what I’m seeing in the 15.5 beta. If you’re still on the release of 15.4, could you check to see if it’s still there or whether it was changed sometime during the current betas?
I’m not seeing the password change field in the Time Machine settings dialog box. However, I’m on a M1 Mac mini desktop and not a MacBook. Perhaps Apple treats their desktops differently than laptops – for example I don’t see the backup when connected to power selection because, well a Mac desktop is always connected to power when running.
A web search turned up a page on another site that indicated a similar issue being reported back in 2023. The post said that Apple had removed that password change capability and that the only way to change the password on the APFS encrypted volume was through Disk Utility.
As a side note, Apple has removed the ability to use FileVault (e.g. encrypt) on HFS+ disks. I first noticed this in Ventura. Any encrypted disks must be APFS formatted. Not sure how this would work with existing formatted HFS+ disks (I don’t have any to test out). Hmmm. Think I’ll fire up a VM of an older macOS release, create a encrypted HFS+ disk and see what happens.
Another test I might try is to remove the password setting from Keychain and see if that repopulates the dialog box to set a new password OR whether I will be prompted for the original password when I remount the drive.
I’ll let you know what I find out. Nonetheless, this is a change in behavior from what I had until late in the 15.4 beta cycle. Until then, I was always prompted for the password when the drive was reattached and dismounting the drive didn’t cause Finder to relaunch.
The behavior you’re describing above is exactly how mine behaved until the RC of 15.4. Now, with beta 15.5 installed, I’m no longer prompted for a password, and the dialog box for Time Machine in System Settings no longer shows the password option.
I found the Time Machine entry in Keychain, and it appears that it’s entering the password directly. I’m going to delete it and see if that restores the dialog box, or simply breaks the drive.
By the way, one behavior that is tied to this is that the Finder window crashes as soon as I touch the drive’s unmount icon. When the Finder window is restored, it shows the drive unmounted and no other error when the drive is physically disconnected.
I wanted to post a quick update that deleting the password entry in Keychain made no difference. The drive continued to reconnect when mounted, and the dialog box did not repopulate with the option to set or change a password.
