Some notes from my research on exploring why the iCloud Passwords Google Chrome Extension stopped working.
Chrome Web Store: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/iCloud%20Passwords/pejdijmoenmkgeppbflobdenhhabjlaj
Note: The following was originally posted as part of my Chrome Web Store review, but since I couldn't fit the full detail into it there, I decided to capture it on this gist instead.
This used to work really well for me, but more recently seems to have stopped working. Not sure if it was a Chrome update, a macOS update (to Sonoma 14.7.5), or just random bad luck.. but where it says "A verification code has been generated by your Mac", I never receive that code anymore, so the extension is essentially useless.
Part of me wonders if this would be fixed by updating to macOS Sequoia (15+), but that's unfortunately currently not an option.
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Edit: Ok, so I did a bit of a deep dive into this, and while I still haven't solved my issue.. maybe some of these notes will help others solve theirs (particularly for non-official Chrome-like browsers on macOS 15.5 or higher)
As a potential workaround for users on macOS Sonoma or higher, you may not even need this extension, as you can right click on any text/input field and select AutoFill -> Passwords:
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We can see the file/contents that needs to exist for the extension to be allowed to talk to the native app (which lets it interact with the password manager) detailed here:
We can see that for this user, it broke with a macOS update around April 5th 2025:
In macOS' 'Activity Monitor', if I select the 'Google Chrome' pocess, click the '(i)' info icon, then the 'Open Files and Ports' tab, I can see tha all of the open files that include Chromes 'Application Support' path are being loaded from:
/Users/MYUSERNAME/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome
Yet when I look in the corresponding NativeMessagingHosts directory:
/Users/MYUSERNAME/Library/Application\ Support/Google/Chrome/NativeMessagingHosts
The required com.apple.passwordmanager.json file is missing.
Looking at the Google Chrome extension docs for where NativeMessagingHosts
We can see that the user-level path is as-above, but the global system level path is generally:
/Library/Google/Chrome/NativeMessagingHosts/
And when I look in that folder, I can see that com.apple.passwordmanager.json is symlinked to /System/Cryptexes/App/Library/Google/Chrome/NativeMessagingHosts/com.apple.passwordmanager.json
I though that maybe creating a similar symlink at the user-level path might help.. but when I look at 'Activity Monitor' I can see that there are like 7 processes of PasswordManagerBrowserExtensionHelper running. Trying to force-quit them (via 'Activity Monitor' or Terminal) seems to have no effect. Toggling the extension off/on in Chrome seemed to have no effect. I haven't tried restarting my browser recently to see if that kills these processes and how many will start again. Removing the Chrome extension entirely didn't seem to kill the PasswordManagerBrowserExtensionHelper processes that were running. Re-installing the extension didn't seem to make it work again, but I now have an 8th PasswordManagerBrowserExtensionHelper instance running. My current guess/theory is that maybe these multiple copies of the process are somehow causing a deadlock so that none of them work correctly.
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For users on macOS 15.4 and above, it seems there is a specific whitelist of browsers that is allowed to connect to this helper (denoted by the signing-identifier and team-identifier):
This issue tells you how to check the bundle and team identifier of your browser using codesign:
For example:
⇒ codesign -dv /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app 2>&1 | grep Identifier
Identifier=com.google.Chrome
TeamIdentifier=EQHXZ8M8AV
This comment suggest where apple will source the list of browsers it will whitelist:
- ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium-macos#144 (comment)
- https://github.com/apple/password-manager-resources#web-browser-extension-distribution-information
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As of macOS Sequoia version 15.5 and above, information in this file is periodically ingested and re-packaged by Apple to limit the Native Messaging Host of the iCloud Passwords extension to only communicate with known web browsers. If you would like your web browser included in the list Apple uses for this purpose, please raise a GitHub issue or submit a pull request.
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- https://github.com/apple/password-manager-resources#web-browser-extension-distribution-information
See also:
librewolf