Lion introduced a great new feature that allows you to capture your signature via an attached camera and store it in an encrypted form for later use. Therein lies the problem; you must have an attached camera.
I have a Mac Pro, and wanted to use the signatures I captured on my Macbook Pro. Following these steps, you can transfer the encrypted signatures over.
On your machine endowed with the power of sight:
- Go ahead and capture the signatures in Preview.
- Quit Preview
- Browse to ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Preview/Data/Library/Preferences
- In Finder, click the Go menu and hold the option (⌥) key to show the Library folder, alternatively
- press ⌘+⇧+G whilst Finder is active and enter the path above to directly navigate
- Copy the com.apple.Preview.signatures.plist
- Launch Keychain Access
- Ensure the login keychain is selected and the Passwords category
- Right-click the Preview Signature Privacy password and select Copy Password to Clipboard. This is the password used to encrypt the signature images.
- Paste it into a text editor and save the file. You'll need to transfer this to your other computer(s)
On your machine you wish to transfer the signatures to:
- If you haven't already, launch Preview, open preferences, and select the Signatures tab to ensure the default configuration files and folders have been created. Exit Preview.
- Browse to ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Preview/Data/Library/Preferences
- Copy the com.apple.Preview.signatures.plist to the folder, overwriting any existing file
- Launch Keychain Access
- Locate the Preview Signature Privacy password in the login keychain and double click to edit
- Click the Show password checkbox and paste the password you copied from your original machine.
- Click Save Changes and you're done
22 comments:
Is there any way to use a saved image (e.g. scan) as a signature without access to a computer with a camera?
Thanks very much! Very helpful and easy to follow.
Aussie Bloke, thanks very much for this. I'm having one problem. On my camera-less mac to which I'm trying to import the signature, the keychain access has no file called Preview Signature Privacy. Any idea how to get that file to show up so I can complete this action?
Thanks much.
JM
Try launching Preview, open preferences, and select the Signatures tab to see if that generates the key. Let me know if that helps.
Stuart, that worked. So simple, I should have thought of it. Anyway, thanks for posting this and thanks for the speedy reply. Really glad to have this function on my Mac Mini. Greatly appreciated.
I like your post on how to transfer Preview Signatures to a non-camera Mac. Only one problem - I don't have the path you instructed to follow??? I have browsed for the Library/Containers/com.apple.Preview/Data with no luck???
Any ideas?
I'll update the article, but for now you should be able to launch Preview, open preferences, and select the Signatures tab. That should generate all the necessary metadata and folders.
VERY helpful! Thanks very much for posting.
Just did this successfully but noticed two things have changed ( I am using OSX Lion 10.7.1).
1 - by default the user library folder is hidden. To access it hit Command+Shift+G from the Mac desktop (or Finder > Go > Go to Folder) and type in ~/Library
2 - there are two files now in the Preferences folder "com.apple.Preview.plist" and "com.apple.Preview.plist.lockfile" - I found you need to copy both to the destination machine for the file to show up in Keychain.
But with these changes it worked fine. Thanks for sharing!
This is VERY detailed and easy to follow - thanks so much!
I only hesitated through steps #3 and #5, both in the second section (referring to the camera-less Mac).
#3 - "Copy the com.apple.Preview.signatures.plist to the folder, overwriting any existing file" - I do not think a plist exists unless you have signatures in your mac (which I guess could happen with a migration from another computer) but I got a little nervous because it was not 'over-writing' an existing file.
#5 - "Locate the Preview Signature Privacy password in the login keychain and double click to edit" - This was answered here in the question/answer section, which unfortunately, I read after! But yes, I found it to be true that the Preview Signature Privacy in Keychain Access is populated after you open preview.
Thanks so much for sharing - it was a great help and success!
You're welcome! I've been meaning to update the article; if you launch Preview, then Preferences and switch to Signatures tab, it should generate those missing files.
Stuart, that did not work the first time I tried it, but then I copied both the plist and the plist.lockfile , then reopened and reclosed Preview.
After that the Preview Signature Privacy showed up in the Keychain.
And thank you! From my MbP to my Mini it worked. PS, hey from Brisbane.
Worked great. Thanks from Berkeley, California!
Aloha.
That worked... thanks. For those who are having problems, I found I had to Quit and restart Preview at the final step for the Keychain to fully update, and then for the "unable to decrypt" message in Preview to change to the signature.
Well written instructions, though I suspect Apple has tucked a few extra steps since it was written by the Aussie Bloke.
Just a THANK YOU :)
It worked for me also. Thanks a bunch!
It worked for me too. Thank you!!!
Just what I was looking for to get the signature from my iMac to the Macbook. Worked perfect Thank you
Hey Stuart:
Thank you for sharing this very clever and easy-to-follow solution to a very cryptic problem!
Thanks from Washington DC!
Thanks. Appreciate the tip!
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