Using Password Safe for Secret Notes and More🔏
Updated  by  nm  2024-4-4

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Introduction

For years I’ve stored secrets in Vim-⁠encrypted files and I wrote about how I do that in Infinite Ink’s Using Vim to Store Passwords and Other Secrets in an Encrypted File⁠🔏. For passwords, this is a pain because I spend a lot of time hunting through my (temporarily decrypted) secrets file for the username and password of a particular site.

I’ve been searching for a new password-⁠management system and I’m leaning towards using Password Safe, which you can learn about at:

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Password Safe (pwsafe.org) is different from pwSafe (pwsafe.info).

Why Password Safe

Here are some reasons I’m thinking about using Password Safe as my primary password manager:

  1. It’s free/libre1 open source software (FLOSS).
  2. It’s free/gratis.2
  3. It’s cross platform (Windows, macOS, Linux).3
  4. It’s actively developed.4
  5. It has active discussion groups.
  6. The .psafe3 safes can be accessed with…
  7. I can use it entirely offline.
  8. I can sync the encrypted safe using iDrive, Syncthing, Sync.com, Dropbox, etc.
  9. I can use Vim as an “Alternate Notes Text Editor” to edit a Password-⁠Safe note. To specify an alternate editor, use the Misc tab in Password Safe’s Options.

💡
Password Safe encrypts all notes, passwords, usernames, URLs, etc.

Secret note alternatives

The main reason I’m considering using Password Safe is #9 above (you can specify an alternate notes text editor such as GVim). Note that there are a lot of other apps that support using Vim or Vim-⁠keybindings to edit secret notes, including…


Why not Password Safe

I may not use Password Safe because of the following.

  1. It does not have built-in diceware5 for generating passwords that are…
    • long,
    • easy-⁠to-⁠type, and
    • hard-⁠to-⁠crack.
  2. It does not support attachments (but v4 will).

Please share your thoughts about Password Safe and other password managers!


References


Endnotes


  1. Free/libre means “free as in freedom.” ↩︎

  2. Free/gratis means “free as in free beer.” ↩︎

  3. For Windows release notes, see github.com/pwsafe/pwsafe/blob/master/docs/ReleaseNotes.md. For Linux and macOS release notes, see github.com/pwsafe/pwsafe/blob/master/docs/ReleaseNotesWX.md. ↩︎

  4. There have been a few releases of Password Safe in 2024. ↩︎

  5. Diceware is built in to KeePassXC, which is another password manager I’m considering. To learn about diceware, see wikipedia.org/wiki/Diceware. ↩︎

Please share & discuss 📝 👎 👍 📯