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Passwords Becomes a Real App in macOS 15 Sequoia, iOS 18, and iPadOS 18

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Although we’re still fans of 1Password, and there are plenty of other good password managers out there, like BitWarden and Dashlane, Apple has finally removed the last hurdle to using its built-in password management capabilities.

Starting in macOS 15 Sequoia, iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and visionOS 2, Passwords is now a real app rather than being trapped inside Safari, System Settings, and Settings. If you have resisted using a password manager or don’t wish to continue subscribing to an alternative, give Apple’s Passwords a try. It makes creating, maintaining, and entering passwords faster, easier, and more secure than doing it by hand. Those already using a password manager can export their accounts and import into Passwords.

What You’ll Find in Passwords

We’ll focus on the Mac version here, but the other versions are nearly identical apart from their screen sizes.

The left-hand sidebar, reminiscent of Reminders, provides categories of accounts:

  • All: Select All to see all your accounts, regardless of what shared group they may be in.
  • Passkeys: If you have any passkeys for large websites like Apple, Google, and others, they’ll appear here.
  • Codes: Passwords can create, store, and enter two-factor authentication codes for sites that support them. If you need to look one up manually because Passwords couldn’t autofill it, you’ll find the associated account here.
  • Wi-Fi: This category contains stored passwords for all the known Wi-Fi networks on your device. Because known Wi-Fi networks aren’t synced between devices, the number of these will vary between your devices.
  • Security: If you have any accounts with weak passwords, accounts you previously shared and stopped sharing, or accounts whose passwords were leaked in a security breach, they’ll appear here. Edit these accounts and click the Change Password button to start the process; when the password changes, they’ll disappear from this category.
  • Deleted: Any accounts you delete stay here for 30 days before being deleted for good. You can delete any of these accounts immediately or restore them to their previous group.
  • Shared Groups: If you use Family Sharing, you automatically get a Family Passwords group to simplify sharing important accounts with your family members. But you can also share accounts with other groups of Apple device owners. To move an account to a group, choose it from the Group pop-up menu.

The middle pane lists the accounts in the selected category. You can sort the list using the menu with vertical arrows, search for a specific account, and manually add a new one with the + button. Otherwise, scroll through the list and click an account to view it in the right-hand pane.

At the top of the right-hand pane is an AirDrop button and an Edit button. Click AirDrop to share an account with someone nearby or Edit to make changes or set up a two-factor verification code. If you want to copy information, click the User Name, Password, Verification Code, or Website item to get a Copy menu. The password becomes visible when you mouse over it. Clicking Website also offers an Open Website option and lets you add more sites where the password should autofill.

Setup Requirements

Most people shouldn’t need to do anything to start using Passwords. However, if you have trouble, check the following items:

  • Turn on Password AutoFill: If your device isn’t entering passwords for you, turn on AutoFill Passwords and Passkeys in Settings/System Settings > General > AutoFill & Passwords. Also, ensure that Passwords is enabled in the AutoFill From section if multiple password managers are installed.
  • Turn on iCloud Keychain: If you want your passwords to sync securely among your devices, which makes life a lot easier, go to Settings/System Settings > Your Name > iCloud > Passwords and turn on Sync This Device.
  • Set up iCloud Passwords for other browsers: Apart from Safari, Chromium-based Web browsers (Arc, Brave, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, etc.) can access and autofill your saved passwords if you install Apple’s iCloud Passwords Chrome extension. (There’s also now an iCloud Passwords add-on for Firefox.) The overall experience is not as seamless as in Safari, requiring a once-per-launch code, and you have to create new accounts in Safari or manually in Passwords, but it works.
  • Configure settings: Choose Passwords > Settings (or look in Settings > Apps > Passwords for iOS 18 and iPadOS 18) to access options. Generally speaking, it’s fine to keep them all turned on.

If you have additional questions, check Apple’s documentation for detailed instructions for all the platforms on which Passwords runs. But realistically, Passwords is easy to use, and although the app itself is new, the underlying password management features and syncing have been in place for years, so they’re stable and reliable.

(Featured image by iStock.com/designer491)

Social Media: Apple’s new Passwords app in macOS 15, iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and visionOS 2 makes the company’s longstanding password storage and syncing features more straightforward and easy to use. It’s password management for the rest of us!

Share 2FA Setup for Team Access to a Single Account

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When your team or family shares access to a single account (such as for banking or social media, which seldom offer multi-user access), using two-factor authentication via SMS is awkward—whose phone receives the 2FA codes? One solution is to use an authentication app. Authentication apps are more secure, and multiple people can add 2FA support to the same account by scanning the QR code at setup or adding the 2FA setup URL later. (In both 1Password and Apple’s iCloud Keychain, edit the login to see and copy the setup URL.) An even better solution is to use a password manager that supports both 2FA codes and password sharing. That way, one person can set up the account with 2FA and add its login to a shared vault or collection. 1Password, Bitwarden, Dashlane, iCloud Keychain, and others provide such features.

(Featured image by iStock.com/May_Chanikran)

Social Media: For better results when a team or family group needs to share 2FA codes to log in to a website, try to use an authentication app instead of SMS, or better yet, use a password manager that can both generate 2FA codes and share logins with a group.

Apple’s iCloud Keychain Password Management Is All Many People Need

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Apple’s iCloud Keychain Password Management Is All Many People Need

We constantly recommend using a password manager like 1Password, BitWarden, or Dashlane. But many people resist committing to yet another app or paying for yet another service. Isn’t Apple’s built-in iCloud Keychain password management good enough?

The answer now is yes, thanks to two recent changes:

  • In iOS 17.3, Apple added Stolen Device Protection, which leverages biometric authentication—Face ID or Touch ID—to protect users against thieves who would surreptitiously learn someone’s passcode, steal their iPhone, and then take over their digital lives. One of the worst aspects of that attack was that the iPhone passcode was sufficient to access the user’s stored passwords, so the thief could get into everything.
  • Until mid-2023, Apple’s built-in password management worked only in Safari, which was problematic for users who rely on other browsers. Then Apple updated its iCloud Passwords extension for Google Chrome to work not just in Windows, but also in Mac browsers based on Google Chrome running in macOS 14 Sonoma. There’s also now an iCloud Passwords add-on for Firefox.

If you aren’t yet using a password manager, try iCloud Keychain.

Passwords Basics

Apple integrated iCloud Keychain into macOS, iOS, and iPadOS at a low level, so you mostly interact with your passwords in Safari. But first, make sure to enable iCloud Keychain so your passwords sync between your devices. On the Mac, you do that in System Settings > Your Name > iCloud > Passwords & Keychain. On an iPhone or iPad, it’s in Settings > Your Name > iCloud > Passwords and Keychain.

If you’re using a browser other than Safari, install the iCloud Passwords extension or add-on and activate it by clicking it in the toolbar and entering the verification code when prompted.

When it comes to website accounts, there are two main actions: creating a login and logging in to a site:

  • Create a new login: When you need to create an account on a new website, after you enter whatever it wants for email or username, Safari creates a strong password for you. Unfortunately, the iCloud Passwords extension or add-on on the Mac can’t generate passwords—you can either create a strong password manually or switch to Safari temporarily to let it create one. When you submit your credentials, you’ll be prompted to save them.
  • Autofill an existing login: The next time you want to log in to a site for which you’ve saved credentials, Safari or your other browser on the Mac displays a pop-up with logins matching the domain of the site you’re on. On the iPhone or iPad, you might get an alert at the bottom of the screen or have to pick a choice in the QuickType bar above the keyboard.

For basic usage, that’s it! However, iCloud Keychain can make mistakes. The site shown above asks for both an email address and a username and wants the email address for logging in, but iCloud Keychain remembered the username instead. Happily, Apple makes it easy to fix such unusual missteps. On the Mac, open System Settings > Passwords, or on the iPhone or iPad, open Settings > Passwords. Here’s where you find and edit your saved logins.

Open the desired login by double-clicking it on the Mac or tapping it on the iPhone or iPad, then click or tap Edit and make any desired changes.

iCloud Keychain provides additional features and options:

  • A search field at the top of the Passwords window or screen helps you find logins if scanning the full list is frustrating.
  • You can use commands in the + menu to create new passwords and shared groups. On the Mac, commands in the ••• menu let you import and export passwords; the iPhone and iPad use that menu to bulk-select passwords for deletion and show generated passwords.
  • Shared groups let you share a subset of passwords with family or colleagues. Choosing New Shared Group triggers an assistant that walks you through naming the group, adding people from Contacts, and choosing which passwords to share. You can move passwords between groups at any time.
  • The Security Recommendations screen displays logins exposed in known breaches and points out logins with weak passwords. Check those and update them as necessary.
  • In Password Options, you can turn off autofill, but why would you? Another option automatically deletes verification codes you receive in Messages after it inserts them with autofill.
  • On websites that support two-factor authentication, you can set up a login to autofill the verification code. During setup on the site, you’ll get a QR code you can scan with an iPhone or iPad if you’re using a Mac; if you’re using an iPhone or iPad, touch and hold the QR code and choose Add Verification Code in Passwords. Once you finish configuring the login, you’ll have to enter the six-digit verification code on the site to link it with the login.

Overall, iCloud Keychain provides the password management features that most people need, and it’s a massive security improvement over keeping a document of your passwords on your desktop.

(Featured image by iStock.com/loooby)

Social Media: Apple’s iCloud Keychain password manager keeps improving, and we now recommend it, especially for those not already using a third-party password manager. Here’s how to use iCloud Keychain to store and enter secure passwords.

After “Mother of All Breaches,” Update Passwords on Compromised Sites

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January’s big security news was the Mother of All Breaches, the release of a massive database containing 26 billion records built from previous breaches across numerous websites, including Adobe, Dropbox, LinkedIn, and Twitter. It’s unclear how much of the leaked data is new, but it’s a good reminder to update your passwords for accounts on compromised sites, especially those you reused on another site. Cybernews has a leak checker that reports which breached sites include your data. More generally, password managers often have a feature that checks your passwords against the Have I Been Pwned database of breaches and helps you change compromised passwords—1Password’s is called Watchtower, shown below. You can also search Have I Been Pwned directly. Don’t panic if your email address appears in numerous breaches because some of the theoretically compromised accounts may be defunct sites, trivial sites you used once 10 years ago, or duplicate password manager entries for a site whose password you already updated.

(Featured image by iStock.com/Prae_Studio)

Social Media: Worried about the “Mother of All Breaches” that has been making the rounds in security news? We share a leak checker that can tell you if your email address was involved and recommend that you update any compromised passwords.

Avoid Confusion by Setting iPhone Password Autofill to Only One App

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Let’s say you use 1Password (or another third-party password manager) on an iPhone or iPad. When that’s the case, it’s easy to end up in a situation where your device will present passwords from both 1Password and iCloud Keychain, possibly along with another app. That won’t break anything, but as you can see in the screenshot below, dueling password managers can be confusing, particularly if one doesn’t have up-to-date passwords. To make logging in easier, go to Settings > Passwords > Password Options and select just one app in Allow Filling From. For instance, if you’re using 1Password, turn off iCloud Passwords & Keychain and all the other apps.

(Featured image based on an original by iStock.com/Kostiantyn Filichkin)

Social Media: Do you suffer from dueling password managers on your iPhone or iPad? If you’re using a third-party password manager, turn off password autofill for iCloud Passwords & Keychain and any other apps to avoid confusion.

If Your Holiday Gift Was a Tech Device, It’s Time to Change the Password!

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Whatever consumer electronics product you can name, there’s probably a “smart” version that you configure via an app or Internet-connected interface once you’ve connected it to your Wi-Fi network. For ease of setup and to keep costs down, many such devices come pre-configured with not just a default username and password, but the same default username and password as all other units. That’s bad enough, but worse, most people never change those defaults, which is just asking hackers and malicious bots to break in and take over. This risk is real—it has happened to security cameras, baby monitors, light bulbs, DVRs, toasters, refrigerators, and even fish tanks. So, if you received any so-called “Internet of Things” devices for the holidays—or have one or more already installed on your home network—immediately change the usernames (if possible) and passwords to something more secure. Store the new usernames and passwords in your password manager for future reference.

(Featured image by iStock.com/EvgeniyShkolenko)

Export Passwords from Safari to Ease the Move to a Password Manager

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Although Apple has improved the built-in password management features in macOS and iOS (you can now add notes to password entries!), third-party password managers like 1Password and LastPass are still more capable. For those still getting started using a password manager, another new capability will ease the transition: Safari password export. To export a CSV file of your Safari passwords, choose Safari > Preferences > Passwords, and enter your password when prompted. From the bottom of the left-hand sidebar, click the ••• button, choose Export All Passwords, and save the Passwords.csv file to the Desktop. After you import the file into 1Password (instructions), LastPass (instructions), or another password manager, be sure to delete the exported file and empty the trash.

(Featured image by iStock.com/metamorworks)

5 New Year’s Resolutions That Will Improve Your Digital Security

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Happy New Year! For many of us, the start of a new year is an opportunity to reflect on fresh habits we’d like to adopt. Although we certainly support any resolutions you may have made to get enough sleep, eat healthy, and exercise, could we suggest a few more that will improve your digital security?

Keep Your Devices Updated

One of the most important things you can do to protect your security is to install new operating system updates and security updates soon after Apple releases them. Although the details seldom make the news because they’re both highly specific and highly technical, you can get a sense of how important security updates are by the fact that a typical update addresses 20–40 vulnerabilities that Apple or outside researchers have identified.

It’s usually a good idea to wait a week or so after an update appears before installing it, on the off chance that it has undesirable side effects. Although such problems are uncommon, when they do happen, Apple pulls the update quickly, fixes it, and releases it again, usually within a few days.

Use a Password Manager

We’ve been banging this drum for years. If you’re still typing passwords in by hand, or copying and pasting from a list you keep in a file, please switch to a password manager like 1Password or LastPass. Even Apple’s built-in iCloud Keychain is better than nothing. A password manager has five huge benefits:

  • It generates strong passwords for you. Password1234 can be hacked in seconds.
  • It stores your passwords securely. An Excel file on your Desktop is a recipe for disaster.
  • It enters passwords for you. Wouldn’t that be easier than typing them in manually?
  • It audits existing accounts. How many of your accounts use the same password?
  • It lets you access passwords on all your devices. Finally, easy login on your iPhone!

A bonus benefit for families is password sharing. It allows, for example, a married couple to share essential passwords or for parents and teens to share certain passwords.

In short, using a password manager is more secure, faster, easier, and just all-around better. If you need help getting started, get in touch.

Beware of Phishing Email

Individuals and businesses alike frequently suffer from security lapses caused by phishing, forged email that fools someone into revealing login credentials, credit card numbers, or other sensitive information. Although spam filters can catch many phishing attempts, it’s up to you to be on your guard at all times. Here’s what to watch for:

  • Any email that tries to get you to reveal information, follow a link, or sign a document
  • Messages from people you don’t know, asking you to take an unusual action
  • Direct email from a large company for whom you’re an anonymous customer
  • Forged email from a trusted source asking for sensitive information
  • All messages that contain numerous spelling and grammar mistakes

When in doubt, don’t follow the link or reply to the email. Instead, contact the sender in some other way to see if the message is legit.

Avoid Sketchy Websites

We won’t belabor this one, but suffice it to say that you’re much more likely to pick up malware from sites on the fringes of the Web or that cater to the vices of society. To the extent that you can avoid sites that provide pirated software, “adult” content, gambling opportunities, or sales of illicit substances, the safer you’ll be. That’s not to say that reputable sites haven’t been hacked and used to distribute malware too, but it’s far less common.

If you are concerned after spending time in the darker corners of the Web, download a free copy of Malwarebytes or DetectX Swift and scan for malware manually.

Never Respond to Unsolicited Calls or Texts

Although phishing happens mostly via email, scammers have also taken to using phone calls and texts. Thanks to weaknesses in the telephone system, such calls and texts can appear to come from well-known companies, including Apple and Amazon. Even worse, with so much online ordering happening, fake text messages pretending to help you track packages are becoming more common.

For phone calls from companies, unless you’re expecting a call back from a support ticket you opened, don’t answer. Let the call go to voicemail, and if you feel it’s important to respond, look up the company’s phone number elsewhere, and talk with someone at that number rather than one provided by the voicemail.

For texts, avoid following links unless you recognize the sender and it makes sense that you’d be receiving such a link. (For instance, Apple can text delivery details related to your orders.) Regardless, never enter login information at a site you’ve reached by following a link because there’s no way to know if it’s real. Instead, if you want to learn more, navigate manually to the company’s site by entering its URL yourself, then log in.

Let’s raise a glass to staying safe online in 2021!

(Featured image based on originals from Tim Mossholder and Jude Beck on Unsplash)

Social Media: Have a safer 2021 with New Year’s resolutions that will help you secure your devices, avoid email and text scams, and stay safe from malware, as well as benefit from the security and ease-of-use of password managers, which can even fill in passwords for iPhone apps.

Have Your Online Passwords Been Stolen? Here’s How to Find Out.

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Data breaches have become commonplace, with online thieves constantly breaking into corporate and government servers and making off with millions—or even hundreds of millions!—of email addresses, often along with other personal information like names, physical address, and passwords.

It would be nice to think that all companies properly encrypt their password databases, but the sad reality is that many have poor data security practices. As a result, passwords gathered in a breach are often easily cracked, enabling the bad guys to log in to your accounts. That may not seem like a big deal—who cares if someone reads the local newspaper under your name? But since many people reuse passwords across multiple sites, once one password associated with an email address is known, attackers use automated software to test that combination against many other sites.

This is why we keep beating the drum for password managers like 1Password and LastPass. They make it easy to create and enter a different random password for every Web site, which protects you in two ways.

  • Because password managers can create passwords of any length, you don’t have to rely on short passwords that you can remember and type easily. The longer the password, the harder it is to crack. A password of 16–20 characters is generally considered safe; never use anything shorter than 13 characters.
  • Even if one of your passwords was compromised, having a different password for every site ensures that the attackers can’t break into any of your other accounts.

But password security hasn’t always been a big deal on the Internet, and many people reused passwords regularly in the past. Wouldn’t it be nice to know if any of your information was included in a data breach, so you’d know which passwords to change?

A free service called Have I Been Pwned does just this (“pwned” is hacker-speak for “owned” or “dominated by”—it rhymes with “owned”). Run by Troy Hunt, Have I Been Pwned gathers the email addresses associated with data breaches and lets you search to see if your address was stolen in any of the archived data breaches. Even better, you can subscribe to have the service notify you if your address shows up in any future breaches.

Needless to say, you’ll want to change your password on any site that has suffered a data breach, and if you reused that password on any other sites, give them new, unique passwords as well. That may seem like a daunting task, and we won’t pretend that it isn’t a fair amount of work, but both 1Password and LastPass offer features to help.

In 1Password, look in the sidebar for Watchtower, which provides several lists, including accounts where the password may have been compromised in a known breach, passwords that are known to have been compromised, passwords that you reused across sites, and weak passwords.

LastPass provide essentially the same information through its Security Challenge and rates your overall security in comparison with other LastPass users. It suggests a series of steps for improving your passwords; the only problem is that you need to restart the Security Challenge if you don’t have time to fix all the passwords at once.

Regardless of which password manager you use, take some time to check for and update compromised, vulnerable, and weak passwords. Start with more important sites, and, as time permits, move on to accounts that don’t contain confidential information.

Social Media: Have any of your online passwords been stolen in a breach? The answer is probably “yes,” and today’s article helps you discover and correct your most problematic passwords.