iCloud Keychain is a useful utility in iOS and OS X that allows you to securely save and store your passwords, account names, and even credit cards to your Keychain across multiple devices. I find the password management utility to be one of the most helpful myself. The iCloud Keychain helps make managing and remembering multiple social media and email login credentials simple. In this quick guide I’ll show you how to setup the keychain to store your passwords, how to view your saved credentials, and how to generate a password using the Keychain.

How to Enable iCloud Keychain in iOS

1. Launch the Settings app
2. Tap on iCloud.
3. Tap on Keychain.
4. Toggle iCloud Keychain to On.
5. You will be asked to either set up an iCloud Keychain password or enter the existing one. You can also choose to verify with another device.

This is the first step you would take get started with iCloud Keychain, granted you have created an iCold account and have upgraded your devices to iOS 7.0.3 or later and OS X Mavericks or later.

How to generate a password  in iOS

1. Launch the Safari app on your iPhone or iPad.
2. Navigate to the site you’d like to create an account and generate a password for.
3. Fill out any information that’s needed and then tap on the password field where you’d normally enter a password.
4. A popup should appear. Tap on Suggest Password.
5. A popup menu will now appear, tap on Use Suggested Password.

How to generate a password  in OS X

1. Launch Safari on your Mac running OS X Mavericks or above.
   
2. Navigate to the website you’d like to create a login for or change the password for.
   
3. Once you’re in a password field, you will see a popup from iCloud Keychain suggesting a strong password for you.
   
4. Click on Use Safari suggested password.

Coming up with and remembering multiple unique passwords for multiple accounts can be difficult. While the passwords generated by Safari aren’t the strongest, they are better than using the same password for multiple sites.

How to manually view passwords stored to Keychain in iOS 

1. Launch the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad.
2. Tap on Safari.
3. Tap on Passwords & AutoFill under the General section.
4. Tap on either Saved Passwords.
5. Enter your 4-digit passcode if you are prompted to do so.
6. In this list, find the login you’d like to view the password for and tap on it.
7. Here you can see the login credentials for that specific account.

How to manually view passwords stored to Keychain in OS X

1. Open your Applications folder.
2. From there open the Utility folder.
3. Click on the Keychain Access app.
4. When the Keychain Access window opens, find and click Passwords in the left sidebar.
5. Find the account you wish to display the password for and double click it.
6. A window displaying  the login credentials will open, though the password is still hidden. Mark the checkbox near the bottom to display password and finally enter your Keychain password to view it.

Being able to manually view your login credentials can be useful for remembering  your password or username when logging into public terminals or a device that that you’ve never used before.