iOS autodelete Keychain items after uninstall?

Privacy & Security General Security

Created Feb ’16

Replies 17

Boosts 0

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Participants 12

Will iOS clear an application's Keychain after the app is uninstalled? I seem to recall that an app's keychain items would be deleted by iOS some X days/hours/minutes after an app is deleted, however I can't find any reference to this behavior.

Edit:

So based on the thread below, it seems that the keychain survives an app uninstallation as a side effect of implementation. If so, it would seem that auto-deleting keychain items after app removal wouldn't be documented.

Re: iOS Keychain values survive to app uninstall

Out of curiousity, does anyone have insight into the observed behavior?

Boost

DTS Engineer OP

Apple

Mar ’21

It seems that the keychain is [not] deleted when an app is deleted.

That’s expected behaviour (except in some beta releases of 10.3). See my post upthread for the gory details.

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southbayjt OP

Jun ’24

Still the case with iOS 17.5 as of June 2024. The keychain is definitely preserved even after app uninstall/reinstall. Quinn's suggestion about implementing some kind of entanglement (or even stembermichal's suggestion of a Bool flag in UserDefaults) appears necessary. Basically you have to implement your own test to determine if the keychain item is a holdover from a previous install.