How to login without password in phpMyAdmin

You will get the below error when logging in to phpMyAdmin without password even if your actual MySQL account itself is passwordless. This is because phpMyAdmin is normally configured to disable passwordless login due to security reasons.

To enable log in to MySQL / MariaDB with no password in phpMyAdmin, you'll need to configure AllowNoPassword option in phpMyAdmin's configuration.

1. Make sure your MySQL or MariaDB user is passwordless and accessible by phpMyAdmin's system user.

   User root by default requires system's administrator privilege to log in.
   Related: How to connect to root MySQL account without sudo

2. Open phpMyAdmin configuration file using your preferred text editor.

   $ sudo vi /etc/phpmyadmin/config.inc.php

   Related: phpMyAdmin configuration file

3. Search for Servers → AllowNoPassword options and set the value to TRUE.

   $cfg['Servers'][$i]['AllowNoPassword'] = TRUE;

   Remove // at the start of the line if exist to uncomment the option.

   Depending on distributions, there could be multiple occurrences of that particular line. Ubuntu for example has the following 2 lines;

   if (!empty($dbname)) {
       // other configuration options
       $cfg['Servers'][$i]['AllowNoPassword'] = TRUE;
       // it should be placed before the following line
       $i++;
   }
    
   // other configuration options
   $cfg['Servers'][$i]['AllowNoPassword'] = TRUE;

4. Save and exit the text editor.
5. Log in again via phpMyAdmin without password.