I recently forgot the MySQL password on my local machine and found a way to recover it.

  • Open and edit the configuration file my.cnf:

    sudo vim /opt/homebrew/etc/my.cnf

  • Add skip-grant-tables to the configuration file:

    # Default Homebrew MySQL server config
[mysqld]
skip-grant-tables
# Only allow connections from localhost
bind-address = 127.0.0.1
mysqlx-bind-address = 127.0.0.1

  • Restart the service:

    sudo brew restart mysql

  • Connect to MySQL:

    mysql -u root -p

  • Flush privileges:

    FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

  • Change the account password:

    ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '123456';