Yes, Enpass is quite good. It’s my current alternative to 1P. Secrets is worth a look too
Thanks, I will look into this as well. I am not happy with the way 1P is not being developed since years, only raising prices. They have lost the the user from their focus.
I am also looking at 1p alternatives, as follows:
- Bitwarden
- Codebook
- Dashlane
- DataVault
- Enpass
- Keychain
- LastPass
- Minimalist
- SafeInCloud
- Secrets
- Strongbox
Questions:
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Do any of these implement a interface in Safari similar to 1P, where you click the icon and immediately see a list of logins, click one, and away you go? This is a big deal for my non-techie wife.
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I’ve only messed with Keychain a little but, unless I’m doing it wrong, you have to navigate to a login page somehow and then Keychain will help you out. I guess I could set up a bunch of bookmarks but that seems like a lot of added maintenance.
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Are there any significant players I’ve missed? I looked at a poll from a couple of years ago and there were lots of other password solutions, but seemingly nobody was using them.
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Should I eliminate browser extension implementations, like Enpass? Apple has changed the rules about Safari extensions so many times I’m kinda leery of them.
All advice gratefully accepted!
EDIT: Conclusions:
Of course I evaluated only a subset of the (surprisingly large) password manager market, and I eliminated a few out-of-hand, for reasons that are, admittedly, at least somewhat subjective. Mostly I was looking for products that could sync between macOS and I[Pad]OS, were easy to use, worked reliably, and collected/exposed a minimum amount of user data.
Conceptually, there are two actions that take place when logging into a website: 1) Navigate to the website’s login page, and 2) Fill in the Username and Password then, optionally, click the Submit button.
1Password used to do all of those things. Now, it does 1 and 2 but no longer automatically clicks Submit. Personally I had Auto-Submit turned off anyway so that change didn’t bother me.
I was not able to find another password manager that would do both 1 and 2. It’s necessary to use the browser to navigate to the login page, either by typing in a potentially long URL, or, more likely, by selecting a bookmark. This means that a “one-click” user experience, which is possible in 1P, is not possible in other password managers. It also means there is added maintenance because every time you encounter a new login page you have to enter it in your password manager and also add a browser bookmark.
Knowing this, I found that many of the listed candidates offered little more than the built-in option, Keychain. As @SuperTachyon pointed out, Keychain is decidedly not cross-platform, so if that is a requirement for you, you need to use something other than (or in addition to) Keychain (it is not a requirement for me, though).
Of the others in the list, I liked Secrets about the best, and Enpass after that. Both of those are non-subscription. Secrets was the simplest but there is very little, if any, flexibility in its data model. Enpass was pretty good too. At first I found it’s browser extension/menubar application a little confusing but I got used to it. Enpass isn’t as pretty as Secrets, but its data model has some flexibility.
1Password is definitely the leader in ease-of-use, and it handles problematic login pages that no other product does, but I’m not a fan of where they seem to be going.
My personal choice is Keychain, but ultimately I may decide to go with Secrets to avoid a household revolt.
This concludes my evaluations. I’m happy to share specifics of what I learned, but please refrain from asking “Why didn’t you look at X?”. Thanks to all who provided input.
I am familiar with Dashlane:
- Yes. It uses an extension that have an icon in the browser you can click. A little window pops up – you see the list of logins and can search as well.
- You can use that extension to pick where you want to go and it will open that site’s login page and fill in the username and password.
- Dashlane is moving away from a native app and using the extension plus a web app that provides nearly all of the functionality in its legacy app.
Note: it’s subscription-based. And more expensive than 1PW…
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Dumb question (and really late, too!): On which OS(es) did this occur?
How far did you get with your comparisons? I’m not too pressured— my 1Password set-up does everything I need for now (I don’t think I’ve ever used the share sheet extension, and I typically only really use it on my i*OS devices), but since this is a live issue, I figure it’d be useful to identify a solid alternative in case I want/need to move elsewhere in the future.
Keychain seems to work well for my basic password needs. Also eyeing up Strongbox and Minimalist…
Yes, that’s where I am, too.
I’ve looked at all of the candidates in my list except CodeBook and DataVault, and I’m hedging on whether to spend money on those two without some idea that one or both of them will do what I want (yes, I know it’s only $30 for both of them, but still…).
I think I could get by with Keychain and bookmarks, and that’s where I’m leaning at the moment. I felt like Strongbox just added a few rather minor improvements over Keychain, not really enough to pull me in. I really wanted to like Minimalist, but I just didn’t. Outside of Keychain, so far I like Secrets the best. Enpass was also good but a little unpolished.
I have to find something that my non-techie wife can use, and it’s a bit of a challenge. She uses 1P now but she really doesn’t understand how it works, or how to fix it when it doesn’t work, and I’d really prefer to not make that worse.
EDIT: Turns out there is a free trial of CodeBook for Mac that is available on the vendor’s website. After installing it I found that 1) Importing from 1P is a fussy exercise, and 2) It takes several clicks to actually get logged into a website (actually, many of the listed candidates suffer from this issue, but CodeBook seems worse).
EDIT 2: Importing wasn’t that difficult after all, I just didn’t do it correctly the first time (I only imported logins). Actually, the data model that Codebook exposes seems quite flexible, unlike Secrets, whose data model seems very simple and rigid. Both need more investigation. I emailed customer support about a less click-y way to choose entries.
EDIT 3: Codebook customer support says there is no “one-click” method to open a website and login.
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I think it comes down to priorities. For me the most important thing is data portability in the long term. KeePass ensures that my passwords won’t be locked in in the slightest to any particular app or service. Keychain is much less flexible in this sense.
You’re right, there is an element of lock-in with Keychain, but I’m locked in to Apple already, and i can’t imagine anything that would make me change.
What version(s)?
I kinda figured that, which is why I started this whole thing. I’m not on 15 yet but I just ordered a iPhone 13 Pro for my wife so I’ll have to deal with it soon.