How to reset a Postgres 14 password on Mac

Resetting a Postgres 14 password on Mac

If you have Postgres 14 installed on your Mac, you may find that you need to change the password at some point - either for security reasons, or because you simply forgot it. In either case, you’re not locked out forever.

In this guide, we'll walk you through the step-by-step process to reset your Postgres 14 password on a MacOS system.

You can reset your Postgres 14 password by following the steps below:

Step 1

First, we’ll modify the pg_hba.conf file. This file is located in the data directory of Postgres (the folder where you installed Postgres, for example: /PostgreSQL/14/data/). Look for a file called pg_hba.conf in Finder and open it in the text editor. Or, open the command line and enter the command below:

sudo vim /Library/PostgreSQL/14/data/pg_hba.conf

After opening the pg_hba.conf file with your text editor, change the ""scram-sha-256" method for all users to "trust.” The method may also say md5 - in which case, changing it to trust is still correct. You will see the md5 or scram-sha-256 method near the bottom of the file. For more information, refer to the Postgres documentation here.

Once this is done, save the file and exit it.

Step 2

We need to restart the Postgres service. This is easy in Postgres 14. Just enter the following commands:

sudo launchctl stop com.edb.launchd.postgresql-10.plist
sudo launchctl start com.edb.launchd.postgresql-10.plist

Step 3

Next, we can now start the PSQL session by running the command below:

psql -U postgres

You will not be asked for a password because we have change the md5 or scram-sha-256 setting to trust in Step 1.

Step 4

Now enter the following SQL command in the terminal to change the password:

ALTER USER postgres WITH PASSWORD 'newpassword';

Change the newpassword argument in the above command to your desired password.

Step 5

Repeat step 1 to restore the pg_hba.conf file back to the correct state. This time, change the "trust" method for all users back to "scram-sha-256" and restart the service.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, you just learned how to reset your Postgres 14 password on a Mac. If you’re interested in learning more about Postgres, you can visit the Arctype documentation and Arctype blog, which contain additional details on how to do this as well.