Transferring Preview app signatures in Lion

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:

1. Go ahead and capture the signatures in Preview.
2. Quit Preview
3. 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
4. Copy thecom.apple.Preview.signatures.plist
5. Launch KeychainAccess
6. Ensure the login keychain is selected and the Passwords category
7. Right-click the Preview Signature Privacy password and select Copy Password to Clipboard. This is the password used to encrypt the signature images.
8. 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:

1. 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.
2. Browse to ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Preview/Data/Library/Preferences
3. Copy thecom.apple.Preview.signatures.plist to the folder, overwriting any existing file
4. Launch KeychainAccess
5. Locate the Preview Signature Privacy password in the login keychain and double click to edit
6. Click the Show password checkbox and paste the password you copied from your original machine.
7. Click Save Changes and you’re done