Get 1Password and then get more out of it

You should be using 1Password. I don’t care if you’re on Mac, iOS, Android or Windows, you should be using it. I’m not a blind fan, I find fault with it, but it’s a password manager and you have to have passwords so you have to have a password manager. In my opinion, 1Password is the best of the lot. Plus, it’s free.

If you’re looking at me wondering what a password manager is and whether that’s a real job, think of the last time you bought something on Amazon. Or logged into your email. Or opened Evernote from a new machine. You have to have passwords and you can’t use “donaldduck123” any more. You also can’t use 7J8d7fdJK(** – if you use that same one for everywhere.

A password manager creates these strong passwords for you – and then it remembers them. All you have to do is click a button or press a key and it zooms you off to Amazon, say, and it logs you in.

But that’s not why I want to talk to you about it today.

By dint of what it does with passwords, 1Password is extremely useful in other ways. It’s great at being your bookmarking for websites; it is really good at filling in credit card details; and it actively helps you when you’re being good and making a note of your new software licence.

Go read all this at length on the tutorial I wrote about it for MacNN.com today.

Windows version of 1Password updated

You know PCs better than I do: does this sound good to you? Aside from the odd hiccup, I am very much a fan of 1Password so updates are automatically good. It’s just that I read this list of new features and I’m not exactly arrested:

I don’t get to pull ‘chock’ off the shelf very often, but this is a special occasion. 1Password 4.2 for Windows is here with all sorts of new goodies to help you work and play better.

You can use the View menu to hide the Wallet and Accounts groups from the sidebar
Wi-Fi Sync is now clearer about what it’s up to
The password strength meter is much strength-ier
We added Secure Desktop buttons to the Change Password window
The Auto-Save dialog now allows adding tags
We improved how we log into non-web-browser apps

1Password 4.2 for Windows is chock-full of perks and improvements – David Chartier, AgileBits(3 March 2015)

Read the full blog post for more.

Create strong passwords

Lifehacker has an interesting article called Four Methods to Create a Secure Password You’ll Actually Use and I’d like you to read it, but I’m also amused how old-fashioned the whole idea seems to me.

Because I use 1Password. I can barely remember any of my very many passwords, not because they are all very strong ones but because I don’t need to. They’re all in 1Password and right there, securely, when I need them.

But if you don’t use 1Password or any equivalents, check out Lifehacker’s article because you need stronger passwords than you’ve got now. You do.