With the transition from MobileMe to iCloud some valued service are dropped. The one I’ll miss the most is the keychain sync between all the machines. That frankly was the reason in the first place, why I bought MobileMe. But a good friend of mine felt the same pain and created a perfect replacement, which is called Keychain2Go.
It consists of two components, one running on your Macs and one running on your iOS devices, like iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. You are able to sync your keychain between Macs in the same network via Bonjour. Furthermore you are able to sync the keychain to your iPhone. And that keychain travels with you to your office network, where it does sync with your office Macs. All in all you not only have a keychain sync between all your Macs again, you also have your keychain on the iPhone for the first time.
Here are the screenshots from the iOS client:
I was also an avid fan of MobileMe sync service for Keychain Access. But I have converted to iCloud, so I just installed Keychain2go on my Macs (2 at home and 1 at my office) and my iPhone (which travels with me between home and office).
Everything is set up and they will sync with each other, but I am still unclear on how to KEEP the key chains in sync. So my questions are:
1. It seems Keychain2go does not sync over the internet (like MobileMe did) but only syncs on devices that are on the same local network. This is the only reason I installed Keychain2go on my iPhone, so it can be the “carrier” between home and office. Ie. it will sync with my office Mac during the day, then will sync with my home mac when I arrive there. This seems kind of primitive, and I guess if I happen to leave my iPhone in the car one day, my mac won’t get synced? Am I missing something?
2. HOW does Keychain2go do it’s syncing. Do I have to launch the app on both my mac and my iPhone to “force” a sync? Therefore each time I arrive at work, I launch the app on both devices, then do the same every night I arrive home?? Again, this is primitive. Am I missing something??
Any help would be appreciated.
Hello David,
1. yes, as stated in the readme I would like to add iCloud syncing if Apple allows that.
2. The apps must be running, esp. on the iPhone. As soon as I have iCloud syncing it’s no longer needed as the apps will sync over the cloud then.
Regards – Patrick