You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).
Using the Built-In Mac Password Manager
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Thanks bunches
Gary, as always, extremely informative and useful as it allowed me to compare Passwords with 1Password which I use. I would very much like to move from 1Password -> Passwords but will need to wait until Passwords catches up as 1Password's feature set is richer (i.e., categories (i.e., bank accounts, software licenses, and much more), third party bowsers, etc.). That said, I do hope to change in the future (depending on the accuracy of the data export / import due to the information volume).
Excellent topic and very timely following iOS18 release. As always, great job Gary. Much appreciated.
Agreed on 1Password, this is the elephant in the room. Our use case is simply a large shared vault with some documents and all sort of things shared with the family. Everything is in the Apple walled garden. And I certainly don't want to be the first penguin in the water checking for seals.
Walt: Walled garden? Lots of holes in that wall: There are extensions for Google Chrome and Edge, and the iCloud For Windows app too. Plus the app can be accessed independently to set and get passwords for other apps too. And passwords has been around for years now. The only change this year is that there is a stand-alone app you can use.
Gary, is the Password manager built on and including Keychain Access (such as in 10.14)? Or is Password manager now separate app split off from other Keychain Access functions? I still struggle with Keychain to cull old data, passwords, and certificates that I don't need. When I update, I don't want to bring a bunch of old useless stuff back from 2016 which might have important sounding IDs like "Apple ID Authentication".
Mark: Keychain is the secure storage for Passwords, yes. Note that "Keychain Access" is an app, "Keychain" is the storage tech. For the vast majority of people, they don't need to use Keychain Access at all, or know it exists. It is for devs and IT pros to handle certificates, etc. The Passwords app acts like System Settings, Passwords in that you only see and handle passwords there, not that other stuff.
Is there another video regarding the Security feature in the Passwords app? If not, I think this question is somewhat related tot his topic. If I get a security flag for a compromised password at a site/account I no longer use, what is your recommendation? I think the best thing to do is delete the password from the password app? Do you agree?
Regarding the sharing of passwords with a family member and that family member happens to have a password at the same site/account? Will the password app automatically be able to determine which user name and password should be autofilled? Or will it prompt the user to select which one and will the prompt indicate which family member it belongs to?
Nancy: I talk about it here, but not planning to do a video specifically on that. In general, the messages are self-explanatory. In that case if you really no longer use that site, then just delete that password item since you don't need it anymore. In some cases, you may want to go to that site and close the account too. Depends on what it is, really. Might as well get your personal info (even if it is just your email address) off the site.
Nancy: It would be the same as if they had two accounts there of their own (or more). They would be able to select which login they wanted to use.
Hi Gary, thanks so much for this helpful video.
I like to keep a simple user password so I don't have to do a lot of typing, but of course I would like a really strong password for the Passwords app. Is there any way to do this?
Hi Gary, two comments/questions: 1 If I got the generated password while using Safari, what happens if I use Firefox and select a favourite.....will it use that password. 2 I understand you can only change the password from a particular app by going to that app and change there. Thanks in anticipation
Richard: No. The deal is that if your account password is weak, then everything is weak. After all, how hard would it be to simply go to an online account and simply request a password rest via email for things? If you can check your email (or messages) you can get access to most things. So make a strong password for your account. Being realistic, it doesn't have to be long, but should be random. Remember, an account password is different than an online password in that someone needs physical access. So backing off from 16 characters a bit is ok.
Bert: Until there is an extension for Firefox for Passwords, or Firefox builds it in to the Mac version, you would use the Passwords app or the Passwords Menu Bar item to get the password. Or, you could use a second password manager at the same time, which is fine.
Good advice as usual, Gary. Thanks very much for your reply.
I use Brave as my browser and can't get anything to come up. I can cut and paste from the backup app. My wife uses Safari, but she has troubles getting her iMac to read her fingerprint. I'd really love to get rid of LastPass.
Howard: It wouldn't work in Brave unless there is an extension for Brave or they add it into Brave (unlikely).
Thanks as always Gary. I do use it although rarely nowadays. My feeling is that of course I don't have trust issue as we all know Apple is one of those co. really serious about security etc. and I don't care much about using it on Windows or android, but what I care is it still is very simplistic compared to other players. It's quite nice to see that it has comeup with specific app instead of mind boggling hunting into that keychain access. I hope it will make it feature rich in future. Thanks.
To remember a secure password is not easy. Why doesn’t apple offer a passkey instead, as for instance Amazon does.
Joost: Apple does. The Passwords app handles passkeys. If the site you are logging into offers it, the Passwords app will save it and use it.
I would like to import passwords from a 3rd party app in the macOS Passwords but this will, apparently create many duplicates. Is there any way to avoid this or remove the duplicates after importing (other than laboriously deleting them one by one)? Thanks as usual. So helpful.
Harold: I don't think so. I'm not sure you want it to decide what to keep and what to remove anyway. But I think either way you will have some cleaning up to do. Or, alternatively, don't bother to clean it up as there's no actual need to do so.