How to see old account passwords on iPhone, iPad, and Mac

Learn how to view a history of password changes in the Apple Passwords app to avoid reusing previous account passwords and strengthen your online security.

Apple’s built-in Passwords app on iOS 26, iPadOS 26, and macOS Tahoe 26 (currently in beta) now saves full version history for all your logins, with a new “View History” button available to keep track of the changes. You can view your old account passwords, as well as see when you changed the password, and more.

This works whether you’ve visited the website to change the password directly or via the “Change Password” link in the Passwords app. Here’s how to see a history of old passwords for saved logins in Apple Passwords on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

View a history of changes in Apple Passwords

1. Open the Passwords app and select the “All” tab.
2. Pick a saved login, then click View History.
3. If there are multiple versions of a password saved, you’ll see them listed, with the current password displayed at the top. Hit any entry to view the full password.

Your history of password changes is visible to other people, provided you use password sharing in the Passwords app. In that case, they’ll also see a View History button and can tap it to view a detailed changelog. However, any password changes dated before you began sharing your passwords won’t be visible to others.

Apple Passwords automatically tracks password changes

The Passwords app automatically adds a new entry to your history whenever you edit a saved login in the app or respond positively to an “Update Password” prompt when changing your login credentials in Safari.

To test whether your password history works, hit the plus button (+) in the bottom-right corner of the app, then fill in some random login info and save the changes. Next, hit the Edit button and replace the saved password with a new one, then hit the checkmark icon in the top-right corner. You should now see a View History button for this login, so hit it to view both your new and old passwords.

Clearing old passwords

You cannot stop Apple Passwords from saving a history of password changes, but you can manually delete a password history for any saved login. Simply tap View History, followed by the Clear button to delete all records of prior password changes for that account. This won’t delete your current password. Unfortunately, there’s currently no way to delete all old passwords for all saved accounts at once.

How is a history of password changes useful

Keeping a history of old passwords can be helpful in several situations. For example, it can help you avoid reusing a previous password, although the Passwords app already warns you about duplicate passwords. More importantly, inline services may require your old password to verify your identity. In such cases, having access to your old passwords can make a difference in regaining access to your account.

Banks and payment institutions may require that you update your password, especially if it’s been a while since you last changed it. In that case, you can launch the Passwords app and see when you last updated the password for more context.

Do more with Apple Passwords

If you haven’t given Apple’s Passwords app a chance yet, you’re missing out. Instead of paid password managers that have been breached, Apple Passwords is a built-in app that uses end-to-end encryption to protect and ensure no one, not even Apple, can see your secrets. To get started, be sure to read our Apple Passwords guide.

If you already use a third-party password manager, you can easily import data from other apps into Apple Passwords. And should you accidentally delete saved logins, passkeys, and verification codes in Apple Passwords, you can recover them.

Source link: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2025/07/21/see-old-account-passwords-mac-ios/