Hello, I have been reading about password managers and was wondering, do I really need one having keychain on my Mac ? If so , any recommendations on which one would be great.
MacBook Pro with Retina display, macOS Sierra (10.12.4), 2.0 Quad core i7 64mb l3 cache 8GB
If you are happy with keychain, then you don't need another one. I needed one that was also compatible with Windows devices so keychain wasn't an option for me.
1Password and LastPass are two popular options.
Keychain already saves your Mail passwords automatically, even if you do not deliberately add anything else.
For me, keychain does everything I need. Keychain (like any password manager) takes a little time and energy to learn about what it does and how it does it.
If you have an iPhone as well, you can share keychains between devices using iCloud. But again, there is a bit of time and energy to learn about it.
If you do decide you need a 3rd party password manager, I highly recommend 1 Password. After looking at several other options, I settled on 1Password. 1Password is a program that has browser extensions you can install for Safari, Firefox, and Chrome. When you get to a web site, you click on the extension, which knows you are at the web site, and it will then auto-fill and log on if preferences are set to do that. You can download a trial version. There is an IOS 6+ app which can sync with the computer version. It will also store credit cards, notes, software licenses, e-mail information, and other things. There are versions for older OSs, so you can sync information across multiple computers. I would purchase it rather than go the subscription route. Disclaimer - I receive no financial compensation for this recommendation.
One free option, if you use Firefox, is to set a master password (in the security settings). That way, when you are at a site for which you have allowed Firefox to store a user name and password, Firefox will prompt you for the master password and the stored intormation will be used; you don't have to remember every id and password, just the master password. You can allow Firefox to sync this information as well as your bookmarks by setting up a Firefox account, but I have no idea how secure that would be. I have not allowed Firefox to sync anything, to be on the safe side.
I found that 1Password was able to overcome some of the weaknesses of Keychains for me so I have been using it for years now. It does much more the just passwords. Check it out.
Do I really need a password manager for my Mac? If so any recommendations would be appreciated.
