4 Ways To Store Secure Notes On a Mac

If you need to securely store information that is not a password, like a safe or padlock code, pin number, or anything else, you have several options that don't involve third-party apps. You can save the information as a fake password, create a secure note in Keychain, create a locked note, or save an encrypted document.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you four ways to store secure information on your Mac without any third party apps.
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So let's say you're using the Password Manager that's built-in macOS. The one you see in Safari and the one you see in macOS Monterey. You'll also see it in System Preferences. You can use that to store passwords for websites. But what if you have some information you want to store that isn't a password to a website. Like maybe a padlock code or a safe code or your ATM pin. Something like that. In a third party password manager they have places for this. Little notes that you could create. But i   f you're not using a third party manager here are four ways to do it with just what you have on your Mac.
First what if you just want to use Password Manager as it is. So you could go into Safari, Preferences and then to Passwords and then Authenticate and here's your list of passwords. In macOS Monterey you'll be able to do this in System Preferences as well. Now if you want to add your own you can add but it's going to ask you for a website, user name, and password. However, you could just fake this. For instance use the website Example.com and it will accept that. Then give it something like a name that's descriptive of whatever it is for the user name. These are to the two things you'll be able to see easily. The password is the thing that's kind of hidden. So if you're going to do a safe code maybe use something like this. You could just add the password and then you could see it here. Notice that the password part is always hidden until you select it. Then you could go to Detail to edit that information. It's kind of weird to use example.com or something like that as the domain name but if you're always consistent, like maybe just use something like notes.me or some website that doesn't exist then you can easily search for those. Then the great thing is that they will be synced over iCloud so you could see them on your iPhone as well.
Now another way to do this is to use Keychain Access. It's the original app where you can access things like those Safari passwords. In fact if I go to iCloud here and look at Passwords I'll be able to see all of my Safari passwords plus a lot of other things as well. But if you go to Secure Notes that's the place for you to just create these little notes so you could add a new one, call it what you want, and add what you want. The great thing is that you could have a lot of text here. So for something like this you may want to add instructions on how to use this code or you may want to include a whole bunch of different information. Maybe padlocks and just all the padlock codes for the padlocks that you have. Then you can add it and always access it again. Of course you have to be logged in in order to access this at all. So you log into your Mac. Go to Keychain Access and then you go here and you could view something like your safe code. You have to even click Show Note and you can see it's asking you for your password again. So you enter in your user password and then it reveals the note and you can edit it.
Now another place you can lock away information is in the Notes App. So in the Notes App you can create a new note. So let's call this one secure codes or something. In here I can do like, you know, safe and put the code for that. Maybe padlock and something like that. I can save all of these and now actually just having them in Notes maybe enough because in order to get to Notes you first have to log into your user account. So it's not like just anybody can get access to these. But if you really want you can go here and log the note. Here you have to set a password and you set it up and now you can see it's unlocked and I can read it. I could close it or if I just were to Quit Notes and go back into it all of the locked notes are now locked. You have to enter the password. Now it's unlocked. Now all of your locked notes lock with just one password. It's not a password per note. So what you unlock you have unlocked all of your notes there. So it's an extra layer of protection. 
Another way to do it is to just have a document that's locked with a password. You can do this in Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. Using Numbers kind of makes sense here although you could certainly do it in Pages. It's just a document with whatever you want. But in Numbers here you could do something like safe and padlock and other things. Include the code. Set this up with headings here, notes, things like that. Style your list as you want and then Save it wherever you want. I'll just put it on the Desktop here as an example. Now, of course, the only way to access this document is if you're actually logged into your Mac. So that may be enough. But if it's not you could always go to File, Set Password and set a password for this document. You can say Remember to Keychain. So as long as you're logged in it will automatically open up the file. But if you take that file and then you move it to another place, like a Cloud location or you save it to a flash drive or you give it to somebody else, they can't open it up without the password. So now here's the file. You can see it has a padlock. If I double click to open it it's going to ask me for the password before it reveals the contents. Now I can get in. 
So there are four pretty simple straight forward ways to secure information like a note or a combination or something like that on your Mac without having to get any third party software. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 3 Responses to “4 Ways To Store Secure Notes On a Mac”

David Girling

2 years ago

Interesting and informative video, Gary. I use Secure Notes in Keychain Access to store bank account details – passwords, pin and security numbers banks now require. It works OK but it's cumbersome to access and update details, particularly on my iPhone. As for the rest of Keychain Access, which I once used to store passwords (now I just use Safari as you suggest), I find the masses of items in it incomprehensible. Have you done anything on it which explains how it's really supposed to work?

Gary Rosenzweig

David: That's how it is supposed to work, yes. Meant really for Mac, not iOS.

Ken

I also lock pdfs for sensitive doc as well as financial spreadsheets in excel - wish there was an easy way to lock a folder?

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4 Ways To Store Secure Notes On a Mac

Comments: 3 Responses to “4 Ways To Store Secure Notes On a Mac”

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