Asklemmy

Take the phone and “work” on it for a few hours, hand it back still not working.

“I don’t know, we tried this before and just can’t get it to work again.”

Set "office hours" and stick to them. She can make a list of things to do. Maybe it needs to be 20 min every evening, or maybe just once or twice a week. My partner has a similar (but more minor) problem, and this has worked both increasing self-help and making the time spent more enjoyable. Though I'm sure it helps that the needy person doesn't live with us. Good luck

fix it!!

Chrome Password Manager is easily the most intuitive I've found. Tons of people use it without even realising it exists. Auto synced via Google account on android and you don't have to worry about it. Idk if she uses iOS what would be comparable.

I have my 80+ year old mom using Bitwarden. She has some issues creating new logins but for the most part it is working great on her desktop and her iPhone.

I have her pointed at my own Vaultwarden server and I know her master password if I really need to get in.

Okay no one has said this, but feel you. When I was younger I was so happy my family thought I was smart and leaned into it. It's great, they want something installed, they want advice, it works. Then they get greedy, they stop respecting my time, I get chastised for not answering my phone because they HAVE to get into their email RIGHT NOW.

So, if you're feeling all of this, it may be time to start setting boundaries. Some helpful things:

Mom, if you want to ask for my help then you can't just undo my help right after I leave. If you want my help, you will use what I set up, you will use this password manager and you will put in the effort to learn it. I offer these services for free, Geek Squad would charge you $200 for this service alone. If you can't do it that's fine, but then you can go to them for help.

I understand that it's not working right now but I'm not a 24/7 service. I can help you in .

At some point some older people just stop trying to learn anything new. I also worked geek squad, which is where I saw this first hand. Some very very basic problem solving and just the will to learn something new will take them 90% of the way, but most have lost those basic skills. For those, well, politely you have to tell them that they have to rely on others, and that's why geek squad exists.

A lot of geeks laugh at the $200 price tag. That's ridiculous! I could do that in 10 minutes! Correct! The fix is usually the easiest part of the job. That's why there's only 1 or 2 actual repair techs per best buy, but 10 or more desk agents who just sit and listen to the elderly talk about how much they hate computers and refuse to learn it.

This isn’t great, but it’s what I ended up resorting to for my mom who refused to use any service, browser setting, or saved file:

• Make a “master” password with upper-case characters and digits (e.g., M45T3R). Memorize it or write it down.

• Interleave the characters with those of the domain the password is for (e.g., for google.com: gMo4o5gTl3eR). She can type the master password first, then put the cursor at the start and type each letter of the domain name hitting the right arrow after each letter.

As long as she remembered the master password, she could reconstruct the others on the fly. A human could still look at the result and figure out the pattern, but at least it protected her from automated tools.

My wife is like this. I just set her up with Chrome's password manager despite the fact that I'm a Firefox and Bitwarden user. Works in Chrome, on Android, and on iOS - she doesn't have to use Chrome on iOS, you just have to install Chrome and set it as the iOS password manager and it still works with all apps and Safari. She doesn't care if Google has her whole life on file and I'm not paid enough to care for her.

Maybe try a different password manager and see if its interface is easier for her to use? There are lots of options, not all of them FOSS but this might be a time to accept a well-regarded commercial solution. Or, since she has the iPhone, try using their password solution. They integrate that pretty thoroughly in their apps and OS, and I think with this year’s OS releases across the board they have turned it into more of a fully-fledged password manager with its own apps. I know very little about it, but there might be a way to integrate it with Firefox on desktop now.

I set up LastPass for my parents but they refuse to use it. My mom got locked out of her Facebook account and can't regain access because she doesn't know the password, doesn't know the email it was registered with, and her phone died so she can't prove any prior access. Too bad so sad. Still won't use LastPass.

Make a document with all of the passwords and save it to her desktop. Print it, too, and leave it in a drawer.

Part of the problem isn’t necessarily you or her, I feel like websites are increasingly hostile toward password managers by coming up with arbitrary rules, weird JavaScript hacks and annoying two page sign-in forms.

I’m a web developer but even I get frustrated with how websites want to hijack input fields and do validation with shithole JavaScript frameworks instead of simpler HTML5 validation (only for frontend obviously, the server should still validate on the backend).

Send her invoice

Use the firefox browser on iphone? You could make an account that links passwords.

so part of your room and board is tech support services? sounds fair.

Did you set Firefox as the default iPhone password manager?