If you’re switching from LastPass (or any other password manager you’re not happy with), you may want to use the password manager that came with your browser or operating system. This is definitely an easy solution and a reasonable one depending on your point of view. Until recently, third-party password managers were known to be more secure, but as Apple and Google work to make their built-in password managers more secure, Microsoft is adding one to its authentication app. So it may be a suitable choice.
However, one way these built-in password managers can’t stand up to their standalone competitors is how difficult it can be to get pre-existing passwords into their systems.
If you tend to be stuck in the Google ecosystem and/or have an Android mobile device, that means you can use Google Password Manager to store and sync your passwords via the Chrome browser. Unfortunately, like Apple’s Safari, Google Chrome makes it extremely difficult to import passwords from a CSV file.
The only way I could find was to try enabling a disabled Chrome feature that lets you import passwords. After searching online I found several methods to enable this depending on the version of Chrome you are running. I’m currently running version 88 and was able to use the following method to add the import command to Chrome (thank you too Guiding Technology for pointing me to this possible solution), my copy of Chrome was never able to import the CSV file I downloaded from LastPass.
No matter, here is the process I use. Maybe you’ll have more luck. Finally, I’ll let you know soon after how I managed to get my passwords into Chrome.
- Type chrome://flags into Chrome’s top address bar. This will take you to the Experiments page.
- Type “import password” in the “Search flags” box at the top. (Probably just typing “password” will suffice.)
- Find the “Password import” item and click the drop-down menu on the left (it will likely be labeled “Default”). Select “Enabled”.
- Select “Restart”.
- Now that you have added the import functionality, go to your Chrome Settings (by selecting the three dots in the upper right corner and selecting “Settings”).
- Find “Passwords” (it will be in the “Autofill” category) and click the arrow to the right.
- Search for “Saved Passwords” and click the three dots on the right. You should see a drop-down menu with the “Import” selection.
- Click “Import”. You will be able to select a CSV file from your file manager and hopefully import your passwords.
If this works for you – great! If not, there is one last desperate way to get your passwords into Chrome, which finally worked for me.
- Download Firefox (if you don’t already have it) and launch it.
- Click on the three lines in the upper right corner and select the “Logins and Passwords” option.
- Click the three dots in the upper right corner and select “Import from File”.
- Select your CSV file and import it.
Now that your passwords are in Firefox, you can easily import them into Chrome:
- In Chrome, click the three dots in the upper right corner and go to “Bookmarks” > “Import Bookmarks and Settings”.
- Select Mozilla Firefox from the drop-down menu, select ‘Passwords’ (and ‘Autofill form data’ if available) and click ‘Import’.
This (peh!) should do it! But if you don’t want to go through all this, there are always free alternative password managers you can try.
