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.
I’d used KeepassXC + Nextcloud to sync for ~4 years.
Then I switched to Bitwarden client + self-hosted Bitwarden Server/Vaultwarden for ~2 years and I haven’t looked back.
The problem you’ll face with KeepassXC + any syncing mechanism is that conflicts will happen. Meaning, you’ll make a change on your cellphone, your internet has a hiccup or stops working. Then you make a different change on you desktop. When everything is synced, you’ll be left with a KeePass conflict file that you need to fix. This might be fine if you immediately notice it, but if you stumble upon a conflict file from a month ago - good luck merging the differences.
Bitwarden client + Vaultwarden has improved my password experience radically. I have phones, laptops, browsers, etc all talking to Vaultwarden. Any conflicts are handled automagically by the clients. Everything “just works” in offline mode (meaning I can add/update credentials while offline and it’ll update the server whenever it can - without needing to do any mental gymnastics).
I can share passwords with friends and family without needing to share everything. Plus, as my instance is self-hosted, my family can get “emergency access” (would be a “premium feature”) to my passwords if something unfortunate happens to me. Plus, requesting emergency access is pretty easy to do, for non-tech people.
edit: a word
The struggle with KeePass conflicts is real. Put basically the problem occurs when you change a DB on device A, change the same DB on device B, and then you sync them using Syncthing. That might happen for me once a month.
I think I found a process that can reduce the occurrence of conflicts, mostly, not entirely. Instead of one DB that every device shares I have one DB per device (i.e. the KeePass file includes the name of the device). Most of the time this can’t possibly cause a conflict because device A only saves to its own DB. The only time it could create a conflict is if I need to pull in an entry that I made on another device. That’s a manual process for me and it makes me more aware that a conflict could happen. I make sure the device I’m syncing from is active in Syncthing, and if it is there’s almost no chance of a conflict.
A one-way sync option for KeePass would make conflicts almost impossible so I think I’ll propose that or work on a plugin for it.
That’s a very clever solution. But it’s really convient to create a login in your phone and immediate switch to your laptop and login.