Manage your passwords with "pass"

Why do we need that tool?

Nowadays, we use a lot of passwords for multiple things, like bank accounts, social networks, and applications. Using the same password for all those things is not a good idea because when one thing gets compromised, we lose all other things.

The idea is to have a separate password for each thing. It comes with drawbacks. Although we can choose an easy-to-remember password, as a human, we can't remember all of them. In reality, we can, but should we? We have other things to care about, so free your head and use a password manager.

There are many password managers out there, so choosing between them is quite challenging, especially when it's the first time you try to use them for managing your password.

I divide password manager into 2 types:

• Cloud-based password manager: YOur passwords will be stored on the cloud (There is no real CLOUD in the computer world, it's just someone else's computer). It looks like a bad idea because you need to trust the providers of the service.

• Offline password manager: Your passwords will be stored on your devices (your micro-computer (Laptop), your phone, ...)

The second one looks like the great option, and, it's fucking is :). For more about security, we need to choose open-source tools, because when more eyes can look at the source code, the less chance backdoors can appear in them.

What is pass and how to use it?

pass is a password manager. It allows you to store and use your passwords in a simple and beautiful manner.

The official website provided an excellent tutorial about how to use their tool. I wrote this article to give you a hands-on experience.

Right now, assume that I have 2 Facebook accounts (I don't use Facebook, btw), 2 TikTok accounts (I don't use that app either), 2 X accounts (yaa, you guess correctly, I also don't have that), the pass will manage my passwords looks like that

├── Facebook
│   ├── bar@myaccount.com.gpg
│   └── foo@myaccount.com.gpg
├── TikTok
│   ├── tik@short.com.gpg
│   └── tok@short.com.gpg
└── X
    ├── elone@x.com.gpg
    └── muscle@x.com.gpg

Prerequisites:

• You must have a gpg key-pair before using pass. I wrote an article about gpg key-pair. You can read it here.

• Having pass tool installed in the system (you can go to the official website to download the binary, or use your favorite package managers (pacman, apt, apk, ...) to install the binary.

Here are steps to use pass for managing your passwords:

• Create a password store, it's just a directory (folder) where all your passwords will be stored in an encrypted format. To create a password store, type

pass init me@taiprogramer.xyz # replace me@taiprogramer.xyz with your [gpg_id]

pass will create a new directory called .password-store, inside that directory, we have one file .gpg-id (contains your gpg id)

• To save your passwords, type

pass insert Facebook/foo@myaccount.com # replace Facebook/foo@myaccount.com with your corresponding name
# The output should looks like
# mkdir: created directory '~/.password-store/Facebook'
# Enter password for Facebook/foo@myaccount.com:
# Retype password for Facebook/foo@myaccount.com:

• To list all saved passwords

pass ls
# Output:
# Password Store
# ├── Facebook
# │   ├── bar@myaccount.com
# │   └── foo@myaccount.com
# ├── TikTok
# │   ├── tik@short.com
# │   └── tok@short.com
# └── X
#     ├── elone@x.com
#     └── muscle@x.com

• To view or copy a specific password into clipboard

pass show Facebook/foo@myaccount.com
# 12345678

pass -c Facebook/foo@myaccount.com
# Copied Facebook/foo@myaccount.com to clipboard. Will clear in 45 seconds.

This document is licensed under the NON-AI-CC0 license.

Examples, recipes, and other code in this document are additionally licensed under the Unlicense.