Password Managers

Between online banking, social media, work, online shopping and more, it can be difficult to keep track of all your passwords, and tempting to re-use the same ones, which is one of the worst practices for password security. Instead, using a password manager may make your digital life profoundly easier.

Why Use a Password Manager?

Password security is more important than ever, with large-scale hacking and security breaches becoming ever more common. Password managers give you one place to maintain and store all of your credentials, including passwords, passphrases, and passkeys, as well as secure notes and files if desired. The benefits are numerous:

Convenience

Password managers often feature browser plugins and mobile apps that can automatically log you into your services without having to type in your credentials at all. This behaves much like when you save a password into your browser history, although it is far more secure and convenient, as it encrypts your passwords and allows you to synchronize your entire credential "vault" across as many devices as you like.

Security

Keeping all your credentials in this one encrypted vault, accessible from anywhere, means you only really have to remember one master password to keep all your credentials safe. Furthermore, with two-factor authentication, even if someone got access to your master password, they can't use it to log into your vault without your approval first. If someone even attempted to, you'd be immediately notified.

Monitoring

Automatic security checks let you run tests on your vault to see if you have passwords that are easy to crack, frequently used, duplicated across services, or otherwise vulnerable to compromise. This helps you have passwords that are easy for you to remember, but difficult for hackers to crack.

Management

Generating secure passwords means you don't even need to remember those passwords. Most password managers will let you auto-generate, store and auto-login secure passwords for your services.

You're probably already using one

For both security and convenience, you can see why using a password manager is a better choice than keeping your passwords stored in your email or scribbled down in a notepad.

If you're not already using a third-party password manager, the easiest place to start is the one already built into your phone. If you've ever tapped "save password" when signing into an app or website on your smartphone, you are likely already using one of these.

iOS Passwords App (iPhone, iPad & macOS)

Apple includes a built-in Passwords app on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. It stores your credentials, generates strong passwords, fills them in automatically across Safari and apps, syncs securely through iCloud Keychain, and flags weak, reused, or breached passwords. If you already let your iPhone save passwords, they are already here, so you just open the Passwords app to manage them.

Google Password Manager (Android & Chrome)

Google Password Manager is built into Android and the Chrome browser on every platform. It saves and autofills your credentials, generates strong passwords, syncs them across devices through your Google Account, and includes a Password Checkup that warns you about compromised or weak passwords. iPhone users who rely on Chrome or the Google app can use it as well.

One thing to consider: While these built-in options are excellent, they are also not as full-featured as the dedicated, third-party managers below. They live within one company's ecosystem and do not move quite as easily across, say, an iPhone and a Windows PC. For most people, though, they deliver the core benefits with near-zero setup, and if you ever outgrow them, a dedicated manager can easily import your saved passwords directly.