Add Notes To Passwords On Mac And iPhone

A new feature in macOS 12.3 and iOS/iPadOS 15.4 is the ability to add notes to password entries. You can use this to store extra information about an account, or to create secure text notes inside of the iCloud Keychain.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at adding notes to your Passwords in your Mac and iOS Password Manager.
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So a new feature in macOS 12.3 and iOS and iPad OS 15.4 is the ability to add notes to password entries in the system Password Manager. Now you can access your Password Manager in two places. One is to go to System Preferences and then go to Passwords. Then you can authenticate and you'll see your passwords here on the left. You can do the same thing in Safari by going to Safari Preferences and then Passwords and then Authenticate and you get the same list of passwords. Just two different ways to access the same thing. 
Now in either location when you select a password here won't right away see any indication that you can add notes. But if you Edit you'll see there's a new Notes field here. You can add multiple lines of text. So this could be useful for adding additional information about the location or ID. So, for instance, some websites may need an additional PIN number to get access to some information on the site. You can put that in Notes. Others may ask you to verify your identity in a number of ways. Like maybe answers to security questions and you could put those here in notes. Still more may have other things that you may need. For instance, some may use special ways to get two-factor authentication like a special app. You can put a note in there reminding you of where to get that two-factor code. 
Then in other situations you may simply want to include information about the site or account. For instance if it isn't obvious what a website is for, maybe it's for a device you bought and the website name is not the same as the device, you could put a note here so years later when you're looking through your passwords, you can remember what this site is about. Or if you have multiple ID's for the same site you could put a note here explaining why you have this extra ID and what it's purpose is.
Whatever  you type here it's going to be encrypted just like the password. So it's going to be secure. When you look at the password entry here you'll now see the note and you can even select and copy the information right here without having to go into Edit. 
Now, of course, thanks to iCloud Keychain you can access this on an iPad or an iPhone as well as long as you're using the same Apple ID. So you can go to Settings here on the iPhone and then go down to Passwords and from there you can look at the entry and you can see your secure note right here. You can Edit it just as easily here on the iPhone or iPad as you can on the Mac. 
I know some people are going to want to use this to secure information that doesn't have to do with a website account. You can use it for this. But the Password Manager really isn't setup for that. When you go to add a new entry you have to enter a website user name and password. But you can just fake it. For instance, maybe come up with some identifier like SecureNote.com that you'll use for this kind of thing. Then for the user name you can identify the type of note like that knowing that you'll see it here in the list. For the password you can just put a primary piece of information about the secure note or just a dash or something like that. Then when you add it you can now Edit and type anything you want here in the Notes and Save it. If you use the same domain for each one of these then all your secure notes will be in the same place in the list. It's not ideal and I hope at some point in the future Apple allows us to add entries here that just have a name and don't have to have a website, ID, and a password. Then we can get the most out of using this Notes feature. But until then this works just fine. Of course then you can find these notes on your iPhone and iPad as well. 
I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 14 Responses to “Add Notes To Passwords On Mac And iPhone”

Keith Rivard

2 years ago

I have a 1Password account but ‘hate it’. Is Apple Password Manager secure and a good option rather than 1Password(which has a subscription cost.

Gary Rosenzweig

Keith: What don't you like about 1Password? Been using it for years myself. As for using Apple's solution, yes it is secure.

Larry White

I find 1Password to be frustratingly buggy. I still haven't figured out how to have it fill out my address on web forms. The only reason I haven't converted to Mac Safari Passwords is because, until now, it didn't allow users to add notes. I'm thrilled that MacOS 15.3 now allows that.

Thanks for the video, Gary.

Sue Bready

Thanks Gary, I found this interesting. I have used my Mac for passwords in the past but find 1Password the best solution for me. With that said, this has definitely given me something to think about.

Ken

1Password is very confusing, I’ve been locked out of some sites. They tell me I’m using wrong user ID or password. I click on the one that is my vault. The Vault has multiple for the same address.

Ken: That's just a matter of recognizing what you have in the database. If you have added multiple passwords for the same site, you've got to figure that out. 1Password can't know which one is right. Same with any password manager, including Apple's.

Gaztrav

I’ve always thought Keychain was lacking compared to LastPass, for instance, but this is a bit of a gamechanger for me.

Maxi

I agree with those above. I gave it a good try but could not get on with it. In the end, They were kind enough to refund my money though. Good customer service - both speed and quality of interactions with me.

Lawrence Moore

I'm still using Keychain. How does it relate to Passwords? It's not clear to me what Safari's role is. It seems to still retrieve items from Keychain. Keychain has a Secure Notes tab which allows free-form notes.

Lawrence: Keychain Access allows you to access all of the entries of all different kinds, stored in the Keychain (certificates, credentials, passwords, etc). Safari (and System Preferences) just deal with web passwords. The main thing Safari does is to provide strong passwords when you sign up for something (or change password) and automatically stores it. It then fills it in automatically. Like any password manager.

ScottH

In creating a new password entry I found not putting a dot domain at the end of a website name does not allow you to save the entry. The good news is it doesn't care if it is a non-valid domain (eg ".notes"). and if you swipe to type the name it even allows you to create spaces in the name. (eg. {some long. notes").

I wish an alternative passcode could be used in place of TouchID to access, in case I needed another person to access for me.

Thought these might be helpful to you an others.

Carl Sechrest

I like to keep an updated hard copy of my passwords in the bank safe deposit box. It's easy enough to print out all of my passwords using a password manager but is there a preferred way to do that with Keychain?

Carl: You can export your password in Safari preferences or System Preferences. That is a text document you can then open and print.

John Clark

@ScottH: Your login password always works as an alternative to TouchID.

Comments Closed.

Add Notes To Passwords On Mac And iPhone

Comments: 14 Responses to “Add Notes To Passwords On Mac And iPhone”

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