Today Appleosophy has found changes to the Keychain icon on macOS Big Sur Beta 8. In previous builds of macOS Big Sur, the icon had a yellow grooved background which has been updated to a black gradient. The key set has not changed and has remained the same. Below is a comparison with the icons from the beta builds.
Keychain Access is an application on macOS that stores your password and account information securely on your Mac. Keychain works in collaboration with iCloud, allowing you to share and sync your passwords with your other devices.
First introduced in Mac OS 8.5 as a password management system, Keychain later became the default system for passwords, website data, servers, network shares, Wi-Fi networks, and encrypted disk images.
Originally developed for Apple’s PowerTalk email system in the early 1990s, the system was used to store and manage user credentials. The keychain was a part of PowerTalk that was useful as a single application, stated by many. Because of its encryption passwords were not easily retrievable by the end-user, because of its features, Keychain was formally introduced and included in Mac OS 9 and later Mac OS releases as a security credentials management application and continued to gain new features in Mac OS X including iCloud Keychain allowing data to be synced between iOS, iPadOS, and iCloud.
Keychain access is useful nowadays in many different ways, if you’ve forgotten your Wi-Fi password or a website password, keychain most likely would have it saved.
Keychain is encrypted and the files where the information is stored can not be accessed without your administrator password. To view saved passwords and other sensitive information you will also need your administrator password. On iOS and iPadOS, you can use Face ID or Touch ID if enabled to easily access your passwords stored on your device or in iCloud.
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