this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2025
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submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

What is a really smart choice for password manager apps? Concerned about privacy and politically involved CEOs.

I've used:

  • LastPass
  • 1Password
  • ProtonPass (Now using)

I thought ProtonPass was a good choice but I'm starting to read more about it. What's just a really solid choice all around, that you can feel good about? Free or paid.

Update: I decided to go with Bitwarden and Bitwarden Authenticator. The features and the experience are better than the three listed above that I've used before. Awesome advice here, thanks everyone.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Been a Bitwarden user for several years now, both personal and deployed at multiple small businesses.

It has been fantastic the whole time. Pricing is great, open source, runs on basically everything, and easy to use.

KeypassXC if you're uber-paranoid or a hardcore Stallmanite, otherwise, Bitwarden all day 100%

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

Also voting for bitwarden

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago

Definitely Bitwarden

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

KeepassXC + syncthing

Fully under your control

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Bitwarden.
If you want to keep it in a file you want to sync yourself: keepass

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Keepass + Syncthing is an undefeated combo

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

KeepassXC + webdav

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

What's up with protonpass? Any pointers?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Password manager from proton(protonmail/protonvpn guys)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, but why wouldn't it be a good choice?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

That's alright. Thanks though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

KeePass + Tresorit

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

No one has mentioned pwsafe, which was originally created by Bruce Schneier and is still maintained.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I recommend Keepass. It's freeware, is available on all platforms and supports biometrics (fingerprints, etc) on Android devices. It also encrypts the password file on your device, so you can keep a copy of that file on a cloud service without worrying if that service really respects your privacy or not.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

This is perhaps overkill, but you can also encrypt the contents of your online cloud storage with CryFS / Cryptomater. This is particularly useful if you wish to store sensitive documents (healthcare, finances etc) in a cloud environment in case of catastrophic destruction of property (destroying computers / on site backups of data).

In this case you can also backup your keepass file in this encrypted virtual storage medium, on top of the prexisting encryption of the database itself.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

My personal choice right now is KeePassXC (PC) / KeePassDX (Android) + Syncthing And Aegis (Android) for 2FA codes, with a yubikey for services that support FIDO keys.

Overall I like this setup because it's decentralized and does not rely on a third party server structure. The only "weak" point would be the Syncthing relay servers or the Tailscale VPN that I use, but this goes back to ensuring encryption of the database is adequate with a long password, and using an open source synchronization protocol that ideally has been vetted by a trusted third party (or yourself if you're capable)

I used to use Bitwarden, and I highly recommend it. I really appreciated it's ability to integrate with email aliasing solutions to generate new aliases from within the bitwarden UI itself. However, my main reasons for switching were the following

  • I don't have the money to pay for it (uni student)
  • I prefer a more self-hosted approach (I will consider using vaultwarden in the future when I have more money)
  • I wanted to move away from using a browser extension for password management on desktop. KeePass' auto type feature is really good, and a more secure input method than a browser extension autofill.

The only additional advice I have for both recommendations is that I do not think it advisable to add Totp 2fa information to your password manager even if it supports it. I feel like this should be separate, on a single device, and backed up in ~2 locations (one preferably off site). This is really to avoid problems if a device is compromised and if your password manager is compromised, but this is definitely in the more unlikely category I feel.

My only major issues with keepass are the potential for sync conflicts and the some feature differences between platforms. A centralized server config like vault/bitwarden prevents the sync conflict issues, at the cost of having one point of failure. The feature differences problem isn't too great, but autotype doesn't work on Linux if you install with flatpak, and you can't prevent screen capture of the app on Linux (only on Android and Windows from my understanding)

Edit: I also tried gopass, it's really fun to have an entire CLI based password manager, but frankly the state of mobile companion apps are appalling. The Android option only is good if you use a dev version, and the iOS one I thought was just ok. I also dislike the metadata leaking that is inherent to the format, and that PGP is the main form of encryption for the time being (some clients were looking at using AGE at some point). Overall it's a cool but flawed concept, and I feel my other two recommendations are superior.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

I use Keepass but I recommended Bitwarden to less nerdy family members as it syncs out of the box & does what they need it to do. Sync is simple enough to set up with Keepass & the big plus for me is that it allows storage of files/documents. Last time I checked this was a limited/paid feature on Bitwarden

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Bitwarden.

You know if you need more than that and if you’re asking on lemmy you don’t need more than that.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Vaultwarden. It's FOSS Bitwarden. Host it on your own server/machine :)

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago

I would recommend people not do that unless they know they need to and again, if you know you need to you’re not asking on lemmy.

Hosting your own secrets not only puts the burden of protecting, providing access to and preserving the secrets entirely on you, but puts a very unique set of hosting goals squarely on you as well.

Even a skilled administrator with significant resources at hand would often be better served by simply using bitwarden instead of hosting vaultwarden.

An example I used in another thread about password managers was a disaster. When your local server is inoperable or destroyed and general local network failure makes your cloud accessible backup unreachable, can you access your secrets safely from a public computer at the fire department, church or refugee center?

Bitwarden works well from public computers and there’s a whole guide for doing it as safely as possible on their website.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm a massive fan, and long time user, of bitwarden.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

It's so much better since they updated the (IMO) ugly, dated UI design. It looks nice and fresh now. Bitwarden is the MVP.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

I use bitwarden for unimportant ones and an offline one for important ones. specifically KeepassXC that was already mentioned.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 week ago (1 children)

KeepassXC. Sync the file however you want.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (3 children)

diy synchronizing sucks ass. i can never get anything to do it right

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Probably not ideal but I use Google drive for synching and it worked fine. The database is encrypted so, at worst, Google knows I have a password manager.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

the last time I did this it was Dropbox and I ended up with a thousand conflict copies of the database

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Syncthing. I'm not sure what I'd do without Syncthing at this point.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

I use Nextcloud, which always works well for me. I don't use Dropbox or Gdrive or OneDrive, but they should work too. What have you been using?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

There's a lot of good things here to think about. I asked, there's a lot of experience out there, and I appreciate all of it. Great community, here!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

iOS users, i guess the best option available is self hosted Bitwarden

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Great thread and good recommendations from folks. I use RoboForm for personal and happy with that for many years now, and Bitwarden for my company and happy with it.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I pay for a 1Password family account. I like it.

Getting the family to use it is hard, but that would be the case with any password manager.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I understand there’s a bit of of bias here, but I’ve been using 1Password for probably 10+ years and have literally never had a problem. Transferred between multiple devices, added family, etc.

Solid as hell and super reliable.

Selfhost if you want, but I’ll take the reliability.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I do selfhost everything I can, but have chosen not to do that with my passwords. It feels to much all-eggs-in-one-basket-y.

1Password also holds my SSH keys and acts as an ssh-agent on most systems, and I also just found out that you can get secrets from your 1Password vault in Python, which means my PyInfra scripts can use it as well.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Yeah, totally agree. I do backups in a similar way. Do I have cloud backups? Yes. Do I also have local? Hell yes.

A combination of the two is likely the best bet but I will say 1Password feels like one of those “oft imitated, rarely replicated” solutions.

Although I’ve also been using Apple’s solution for similar reasons. Works great, too.

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