I’ve always hated the idea of using a subscription/cloud hosting for password management. I feel like I should have a LOT more control over that stuff and I don’t really want to hand all my keys over to a company.
All my secrets have been going in a highly encrypted archive with a long passphrase, but obviously that isn’t convenient on all devices. It’s been fine, I can open it on any computer but it’s not super quick. It does have the advantage of being able to put in multiple files, notes, private keys but it’s not ideal.
Anyway, finally found something that isn’t subscription, and has a similar philosophy - a highly encrypted archive file, and it’s open source and has heaps of clients including web browser plugins so it’s usable anywhere, and you can sync the vault with any file sync you like.
Thought you guys might appreciate the find, password managers have always been a bit of a catch 22 for me.
Note for android i found keepassxc the best app, and i’m using KeePassHelper browser plugin, and the KeePassXc desktop app as well as the free official one. Apps all seem to be cross platform.
Maybe a silly question, but since I am considering making the jump to a password manager too, I am curious:
If I have a selfhosted server at home that is not connected to the public internet, can I still ise Keepass? Does it have to constantly sync with the server or is it enough that when I get home my passwords are syncing? Could that be a problem?
You have your local replica of the database on your device and once you’re home or can connect to your home server (through VPN, for example) it will sync with the remote database. I used to have synthing running for this and it worked without issues.
I use KeePassXC, but am assuming KeePass is very similar.
You’ll have a single file on your machine that is your encrypted password database. Syncing is not handled by KeePass and is your responsibility.
If you want to sync only when you get home, as long as your sync app that is fine with it, KeePass won’t know or care.
Keep in mind if you make changes on two devices without keeping them in sync, one will probably get overwritten unless you take special care to handle it. (My sync app warns me, then I take both conflicting files and in the KeePass app, I can merge them to solve the conflict without data loss.)
Ideally keypass would allow handling such conflicts internally.
Thats the big disadvantage of a single-file approach.
Could easily be avoided e.g. sync whole folder and now you can have multiple files, e.g. 1 write file per program used.
If your server is not “online” you could vpn into your home network and use it that way. Another option is to have it local, meaning for example with bit/vault-warden you can still view your passwords if you don’t have connection. But you can’t edit or add new ones