That warning is not currently given in the Settings app, which instead says that it is either/or, as it used to be.ĭon’t think you can regenerate your recovery key if you lose it, either. Lose your key, and you lose your ability to reset your password. Normally, you can approve this from one of your trusted devices, but with the recovery key enabled, you need that plus a trusted device.

First, if you enable a recovery key, you will need to use it if you ever need to reset your Apple ID password. I recommend not enabling a recovery key until Apple has fully updated its ecosystem to explain and support the feature.īut it goes on to explain that the key now works in a different way. But weeks after iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 were released, the Apple ID support sites, Apple Support app, and Find My app remain out of date with the use of this newly revived recovery key, even though various support documents have been updated to explain correctly some of the details of how it’s intended to work. Macworld has a lengthy explanation of why that is, beginning with why you shouldn’t do it now.Īpple has updated necessary pieces of iOS, iPadOS, and macOS to let you set a recovery key. You definitely won’t want to enable one now, and you may not want to do so ever …

However, they now work in a different way. In those days, it was an extra precaution you could take against getting locked out of your account.Īpple abandoned recovery keys when it switched to a smarter two-factor authentication process, before reintroducing them in a new form in iOS 14. We explained way back in 2014 why you might want to have an Apple ID recovery key.

How to get the recovery key for mac