Password manager for Mac Air

[PinotGris]

I have my brand new first Mac. I am migrating to Mac from windows, although I have an iPhone and iPad for a few years now.
I have made an appointment for some support in getting to know my machine.
My first task is to get a new password manager. I have been using Keepass and I like it. It is free and works well. They used to have Keepass mini for apple which was great but no more.
THe IPassmanager in the Mac app is not free.
Is there a free one like Keepass?
What is Mac Keychain and how does it work? Do you use it to store your passwords?
I let the Mac save some of my passwords like mail and Facebook but not Vanguard or my Bank.
Thank you.

[Bogle7]

Spend the money for 1Password.

[rich126]

I don't use keychain because it locks me into Apple devices. I use lastpassword. Someone mentioned 1password. That is fine also. You can also use them on a iPhone or windows OS.

[beyou]

Keychain is good if you stay within the apple world.
Since I use Mac, iphone and ipads, works great for me.
My sons use lastpass free edition to attain cross browser/OS support. I din’t really care to use Windows so not a bug deal to me, and keychain is built into mac OS and IoS.

[puc_ytpme]

Since you like Keepass, there is an alternative for Mac's that branched off of KeePass... Its called KeePassXc. It's a bit different, not by much & they update more frequently than KeePass.

[DiamondplateDave]

As stated, KeepassXC will work on your Mac. See my post in other BH thread where I detail how I switched to Bitwarden

[BeneIRA]

1Password for Mac. Spend the money on the year subscription. It's worth it.

[MrNo]

My suggestion is BitWarden. I used LastPass and ~ 18 months ago migrated to BitWarden. It works great on MacOS, Linux, windows and IOS.

[BolderBoy]

Since you like Keepass, there is an alternative for Mac's that branched off of KeePass... Its called KeePassXc. It's a bit different, not by much & they update more frequently than KeePass.

+1 for KeePassXC.

[k b]

Glad I stumbled upon this chain today. Couple of rookie questions, please (in my defence - I did watch a couple of YT videos to understand how this works ):

• Lastpass seems to be most commonly used. I see that they offer a free version, which does the job for me. Any reason why a "regular" household would need Premium?
  How do I compare ACROSS offerings like Lastpass, Bitwarden, 1Password, etc.?
  What is the business model for free providers beyond enticing me to upgrade? That is, am I leaving any of my data with them?

Thanks for all responses.

[Dottie57]

I just use the built in Keychain. It is much more secure than my written down passwords. I don’t store financial passwords in it. Those are stored in my noggin.

[k b]

I am looking for a manager to use on both Mac and Windows, preferably across browsers.

That is, a browser add-on that I could access from any browder / machine. Then, I could just login to Lastpass or Bitwarden first and then head to whichever site I want to visit. Does that make sense?

[douginct]

I have been using Passwords Plus from Dataviz for several years. Not fancy or particularly advanced. But it has apps for iPad and iPhone as well as for the Mac. And it all syncs. Enter an account or website and the PW on my iMac and it is immediately available on my mobile devices and vice versa. And it is very flexible. You can add or modify all the fields - example, you can add fields for account numbers and security questions. And there is a notes field as well. I had a different app for a while but the syncing was a mess. This just works.

[Jags4186]

I use Apple’s Keychain. I don’t mind being locked into Apple. They make the best phones, best tablets, and best computers for my needs.

[typical.investor]

I use Apple’s Keychain. I don’t mind being locked into Apple. They make the best phones, best tablets, and best computers for my needs.

I do too.

My quibble is that since OSX 10.9, passwords stored in Safari are not accessible to Chrome (but passwords originated in Chrome are still shared to Safari).

Of course, you can look it up in the KeyChain app, but it's a little buried in Applications/Other ... And it's a little hidden under IOS too under Settings/Passwords

I don't feel the need to get anything else though ...

[PinotGris]

Thanks for all the responses.
It seems like keychain will work for me. That settles a big question of should i keep it or return it.i am averse to having to pay
an annual fee. MS office is annual fee now also. One reason i am switching to Apple.
The Macbook air screen seem so tiny. I have to enlarge it every time.does this bother anyone?

[Eagle33]

The Macbook air screen seem so tiny. I have to enlarge it every time.does this bother anyone?

Open System Preferences, select Displays and change resolution to scaled & select large text.

[trigger08]

The built-in Keychain app is probably good enough, although I've been a paid 1Password customer for years and never had a complaint. They still offer a pay-and-you-own-it option instead of a subscription, but you probably have to dig around to find it.

[SurferLife]

I've been using Yojimbo for about 10 years and it's great since it can hold more than passwords, like codes for software and notes. It's great for when I have those senior moments. So, it does passwords, but can also do more, if you want, but you don't have to. You can also have the info copied to your clipboard with the use of the built-in fingerprint reader. I like Yojimbo more than keychain because I also sometimes add my security questions to my entry in the notes area. You can also add an entry and put the webpage address for it which has also been helpful in the past.

[dboeger1]

Admittedly, this may be a bit silly, but anecdotally, in my personal experience, Apple products/accounts are the absolute worst when it comes to people remembering passwords and/or otherwise losing access. It may just be my social circle, but literally every Apple device owner I know (close to a dozen of them) has forgotten their Apple ID at least once, and it's a royal pain trying to recover them. My experience with Apple is quite limited, but I do use a company-issued laptop at my current job, and I had a major issue where an update corrupted the keychain or something (admittedly, the notification messages about it were super confusing), and I ultimately had to delete/reset it. The weird thing is I kept clicking Cancel whenever the prompt came up, and things mostly seemed to work fine, but I had issues with certain accounts not being remembered. After about a week, I got sick of the prompts, so I let it do whatever it wanted, but that somehow erased certain certificates from my employer, and so I lost access to certain services and had to get someone from IT to sort it out.

Maybe I'm just unlucky and others have had no issues, but when I add my experiences on top of the fact that it's Apple-only, I just think it's a terrible idea to use Apple as a general password manager. At the very least, I would suggest something cross-platform like Chrome or Firefox, but those are still just web browsers that save web site credentials only.

Personally, I chose Bitwarden because I wanted a free option without device limits, but also native clients in case I didn't want to go through a browser, and Bitwarden was the only reputable option I could find that had both of those features for free. To be clear, many offer free mobile apps, but either charge for or lack altogether desktop clients. In retrospect, I way overestimated the need for a desktop client. I started out using it, but the browser plugins are so convenient, I uninstalled the native client. That being said, there are valid use cases, such as web developers who may prefer to use a single native client along with multiple browsers and/or CLIs, or people who can't or won't install browser plugins for whatever reason. I believe LastPass is similarly unrestricted when it comes to device counts, but it does not have native desktop clients, which is why I passed up on it. Knowing what I know now, it probably would have been exactly the same for me.

It took me many hours, I'm talking like days, to get most of my account credentials uploaded to Bitwarden and updated with strong, unique passwords. Even now, I still find myself catching old accounts I've made but forgot to update. It was totally worth it. As I've signed up for more accounts over the years, I've gotten notified of all kinds of data breaches, and I even received a phishing/extortion email a couple of months ago containing my old password in plain text, which I used to use for almost everything. I can't tell you how much peace of mind using a dedicated password manager properly has given me.

While you're at it, I recommend Authy for 2FA. More importantly, I recommend against Google Authenticator. The problem is that GA is tied to your specific device. If you lose or trade in the device without deactivating 2FA on all your accounts, you risk losing all access. I found this out the hard way when I traded in a 2-year old phone, like, you know, most normal Americans do. In my opinion, treating a specific device as a second factor is fundamentally flawed. By using an Authy account, I'm much less likely to lock myself out of my own accounts, plus I can use their web and native clients instead of my phone. You can then either store your Authy password in your password manager, or just remember a 2nd master password. Both have pros and cons. Storing your Authy password in a password manager increases the risk an attacker could compromise both of your factors if they learn your password manager credentials (but, I mean, the security of the password manager strategy kind of hinges on keeping those strong and secret anyway). By extension, such an attacker could also change your Authy credentials in addition to all the other damage they could cause, making it that much harder to recover your accounts. On the other hand, just remembering your Authy password separately decouples it from your password manager credentials, but being human, that most likely means your password will not be as strong or random, and it's one more thing to remember. I think either way is valid and significantly more secure than not using password managers or 2FA at all.

[typical.investor]

Admittedly, this may be a bit silly, but anecdotally, in my personal experience, Apple products/accounts are the absolute worst when it comes to people remembering passwords and/or otherwise losing access. It may just be my social circle, but literally every Apple device owner I know (close to a dozen of them) has forgotten their Apple ID at least once, and it's a royal pain trying to recover them.

I call that user error and blame the Apple device owners for being silly and clueless. I have forgotten mine too, but it's trivial to recover your Apple ID from the Apple Keychain once you've saved it there.

It'll only take touchID/facial recognition on your iOS device or entry of your mac login to access the Keychain.

[tm3]

I recently researched password managers for use on my Mac. The two "highest rated" (hard to tell which online evaluations are really comparisons and which are veiled ads) seemed to be 1Password and Bitwarden, with 1Password seeming to be more in favor on this forum. I signed up for both and used both for a couple of weeks before settling on Bitwarden. Bitwarden seemed slightly more intuitive. One of 1Passwords most ballyhooed features is its "watchtower" feature which is supposed to alert the user of potential problems with passwords, compromised logins, etc. I found that "watchtower" gave me an all clear notice while the comparable feature of Bitwarden diagnosed some potential issues.

Bottom line is I consider them both good products, but see no reason to pay $60/y for 1Password when Bitwarden is free or under $10/y depending on one's preference.

I will also add that after resisting a pw manager for years, now having used one for a while I would never go back. In addition to security there is a significant convenience factor that I was unaware of.

[rich126]

I recently researched password managers for use on my Mac. The two "highest rated" (hard to tell which online evaluations are really comparisons and which are veiled ads) seemed to be 1Password and Bitwarden, with 1Password seeming to be more in favor on this forum. I signed up for both and used both for a couple of weeks before settling on Bitwarden. Bitwarden seemed slightly more intuitive. One of 1Passwords most ballyhooed features is its "watchtower" feature which is supposed to alert the user of potential problems with passwords, compromised logins, etc. I found that "watchtower" gave me an all clear notice while the comparable feature of Bitwarden diagnosed some potential issues.

Bottom line is I consider them both good products, but see no reason to pay $60/y for 1Password when Bitwarden is free or under $10/y depending on one's preference.

I will also add that after resisting a pw manager for years, now having used one for a while I would never go back. In addition to security there is a significant convenience factor that I was unaware of.

While free is nice, at some point they will likely have to charge more, sell the product to another company or shut down. Since I've seen that with other free sites (several photo hosting sites have disappeared over the years), I don't mind paying a small amount for a product. And starting over with a new password manager would be a pain, not impossible but just very time consuming. (I haven't looked at bitwarden but may check it out just to see what it is like.)

[sperry8]

Glad I stumbled upon this chain today. Couple of rookie questions, please (in my defence - I did watch a couple of YT videos to understand how this works ):

• Lastpass seems to be most commonly used. I see that they offer a free version, which does the job for me. Any reason why a "regular" household would need Premium?
  How do I compare ACROSS offerings like Lastpass, Bitwarden, 1Password, etc.?
  What is the business model for free providers beyond enticing me to upgrade? That is, am I leaving any of my data with them?

Thanks for all responses.

I use regular free LastPass. Works for me. I used to use paid LastPass when they offered bookmarks across computers. But since they got rid of it - I downgraded and have been fine for years.

[tm3]

One more point to the OP -- if you are considering 1Password you may want to review their support forum. When I was auditioning there were a slew of complaints about problems with the newest Mac OS. I'm using an older OS and had no problem with 1Password.

[exigent]

We use 1Password for the whole family. Not free, but you get what you pay for. It’s really, really good. I especially appreciate the ability to share vaults with others. My default view is “all vaults” but logins and other items are subdivided into those that only I can access, a shared vault with my wife, a shared vault with my wife and each kid (high school through college-age), and a family-wide vault.

Each family member has also has their own private vault.

So... When I look at it, everything is there in one view. But certain items are shared with others. For example, stuff like Netflix and other services of that sort go in the family vault. Vaults shared with the kids individually include insurance cards, driver’s license images, birth certificate images, etc. Financial stuff goes into a vault shared with my wife. And my Bogleheads login goes into my personal vault.

[regfman]

My suggestion is BitWarden.

I agree. Multi-platform, multi-device and free (although this is one that I donate to).