See our password guide for more details on creating a strong password. These are easier to remember than unnatural combinations of symbols and capital letters. You can create a strong master passphrase using regular, random words. A passphrase is a string of many words that are easy for you to remember but difficult for others to guess.

So make your master password a passphrase. The longer it is, the less you need to worry about having special characters or capital letters or numbers. This master password will decrypt all of your passwords, so it needs to be strong! It should be hard to guess and long.When using a master password to secure your password database, here are a couple of things to keep in mind: Without it, nobody can see what’s inside the password database. Using a master password anchor linkĪ master password acts like a key -in order to open the password database, you need the correct master password. Since your master password protects all your other passwords, you should make it as strong as possible. Password databases can be encrypted using a master password. So, if your computer is off and someone steals it, they will not be able to read your passwords. These databases are encrypted when they are stored on your computer’s hard disk. KeePassXC works with password databases, which are files that store a list of all your passwords. Research suggests that many commonly used passwords managers have vulnerabilities, so use caution when determining whether or not this is the right tool for you. Using a password manager creates a single point of failure and establishes an obvious target for bad actors or adversaries. This guide recommends KeePassXC because it is cross-platform and more actively developed than some of the alternatives.

Some of these are based on the same code, while others just use the same database format. There are a number of programs with names similar to KeePassXC, like KeePassX, KeePass, and KeePass2. You only need to remember one master password that allows you to access the encrypted password manager database of all your passwords.

A password manager is a tool that creates and stores passwords for you, so you can use many different passwords on different sites and services without having to memorize them.

KeePassXC is a cross-platform password manager that allows you to store all of your passwords in one location.

Keepass manual