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Manually Installing Client Authentication Certificates using KeyChain Access

A Note of Clarification:

This page is part of a tutorial explaining how to install Client Authentication Certificates into various web browsers. And this page describes how to manually start the KeyChain Access tool on the Mac OSX operating system, and then manually import a Client Authentication Certificate (a .p12 file) so that it may be used by the Safari web browser.

The complete tutorial is available here.

Manually Installing Client Authentication Certificates using KeyChain Access

Safari on Mac OSX presents a slightly different situation than most other browsers because macs have a centralised certificate storage mechanism (“key-store”) provided by the operating system. So the process is to import the .p12 certificate file using the KeyChain tool, rather than directly into the browser.

If simply double-clicking on the .p12 certificate file doesn't work to automatically open the Keychain Access utility and import the certificate, then follow these steps to accomplish this manually:


Step 1

Open the Keychain Access application. It can be found in the Launchpad (or in the Applications directory) within the Utilities or Other folder (Apple renamed “Utilities” to “Other” in more recent version of Mac OSX, so the name of that folder depends upon the version of OSX on your computer).

So for example, in the Finder, in the left-hand column under Favorites. click Applications, then find Utilities or Other, and then double-click to start the Keychain Access app.

SafariManual-1.png


Step 2

In Keychain Access, under the File menu, select Import Items.

SafariManual-2.png


Step 3

In the file search window that appears, find the .p12 certificate file, and in the Destination Keychain drop-down list select login, then click Open. If the Destination Keychain list is not visible then you may need to click on a button labelled Options first.

SafariManual-3.png


Step 4

You will be asked to enter the password for the .p12 certificate - your system administrator will have given you the password with the key. Enter the password and click OK.

SafariManual-4.png


And now continue with Step 3...

And now continue with Step 3 in the main Safari Tutorial here...

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