One warning, if you forget the "master password" the only recovery is starting over from scratch.
What do you mean? What do have to do?
That has happened to me (which in one reason I have tried so many password systems). An early version of Keychain hiccuped and lost the keychain file. There was, of course, no remembering all the various sites much less the passwords so I ended up resetting the passwords when I logged onto each and every site to rebuild the Keychain file. It took for blooming EVER!
Keychain and OS X file management are far more stable these days — thank heavens, but now I take a sixfold approach.
- The keychain is backed up in Time Machine
- The keychain is synchronized in iCloud which has the added benefit of making the passwords available on my iPhone and iPad.
- I have a logon and wake from sleep password so keychain can fill in the userid and password even on sites that normally exclude automatic password entries
- I have the most important and critical passwords in 1Password
- 1Password is also backed up in Time Machine
- 1Password is synched with iCloud and my iPad.
I use different passwords for Keychain and 1Password and store the Keychain password in 1Password and
vice-versa. Keychain does a good job of suggesting secure passwords for new sites or when changing a site password, but it is not as flexible as 1Password in that regard. I have encountered sites that will not accept the Keychain suggestion, but I have always been able to adjust the 1Password suggestions to work with any site. An interesting sidelight is the difference in how secure each of the utilities thinks the same password is. The difference is sometimes night and day.
