How To Generate Passwords With The Chrome Password Tool

Creating a good, strong password is essential if you want to keep your various online accounts safe. Given the state of cyber security, a password isn’t always enough which is why there is two-factor authentication support for most services you use online. That doesn’t mean passwords are useless. A strong password is often a reasonably good defense against minor attacks. If you have trouble thinking of a good password, and you tend to use the one good password you have for everything, consider taking some help from the Chrome password tool.

Chrome Password Tool

It’s common knowledge that Chrome has a password manager but it also has a secret-ish password tool that can help you generate secure passwords. You can’t use it right out of the box. You have to first enable it.

Open Chrome and type the following in the URL bar. Tap enter.

chrome://flags

This will open the Chrome Flags page. Search for Passwords and you ought to be able to find a flag named Password Generation. Open the dropdown next to it, and select the Enabled option. Relaunch Chrome.

Once the tool has been enabled, find a sign up page for a service or app that you want to use. Enter your name, email, etc., on the sign-up form and then click inside the Password field. A dropdown will open with one password suggestion. Click to insert it into the password field. Make sure you note it down somewhere or memorize it. It isn’t user friendly however it is automatically going to be saved to the password manager in Chrome. This is good, or bad depending on how secure you think the password manager is.

The tool only gives you one suggestion so if you need a different one, click outside the password field and then click inside it again. Each time the password field is in focus, Chrome gives you a new password.

If you didn’t note the password down and have used it to sign up to a service or app, you can recover it from the password manager. In Chrome go to the following page and look for the domain name that you signed up on. Click the eye icon to unhide the password. If your system is password protected (on an OS level) you will need to enter your account password to view the passwords stored in Chrome.

chrome://settings/passwords

If you don’t like using the Chrome password manager, there are quite a few alternative options available and Mac users can always use Keychains.