Change server from caching_sha2_password to password

[Michael Glenn Williams]

HI, I've installed mysqld server on MacOS Monterey using brew, to be part of my local development environment for a Laravel PHP application. Currently, the server is setup to use caching_sha2_password authentication only, based on the mysql workbench client having the root user's Authentication Type menu being disabled. I tried adding:

default-authentication-plugin=mysql_native_password

into both /usr/local/etc/my.cnf and ~/.my.cnf and restarting the server with

brew services restart mysql

but the authentication to the server remains unaffected. The Laravel app can only authenticate with DB user and password. What might I be doing wrong?