This will take several hours to complete but you’ll generate a new recovery key, that you can jot down properly this time. You have to turn off FileFault in System Preferences, then turn it back on again. So what do you do if, like me, you’ve either written down the key wrong, or your copy of the key has become corrupted? Simple. If it’s incorrect you’ll be told, and asked to enter it again in case you mistyped the first time around. I was able to test the recovery key by opening a Terminal window and typing the following: sudo fdesetup validaterecoveryĪfter this you must type your login password ( NOT the recovery key), and then input the key when prompted. But it will NOT be automatically updated if you decide to change your login password in the future. Gazing at the key yesterday I realised that something had gone wrong. A: Based on this article, I would say that your recovery key is currently set to your login password: Use FileVault to encrypt the startup disk on your Mac - Apple Support. Without either your password or recovery key, it will be impossible to decrypt the disk contents. The recovery key is like a master key that will unlock the disk if you forget your password. The latter seems most secure to me and I store the key in a password manager. When you enable FileVault (which I strongly recommend), you’ll have the choice of either uploading a recovery key to iCloud, or avoiding putting the key online and writing it down somewhere for future reference.

How to find the recovery key for mac