As part of our efforts to focus on enhancing other features in our core product, the Dropbox Passwords application will be discontinued on October 28, 2025.
We recommend transferring your passwords to another trusted and secure password manager application such as 1Password.
Did anyone use Dropbox Passwords? I wish companies would stick with their core competencies rather than wasting everyone’s time with substandard alternatives to unrelated apps.
If you were unlucky enough to be lured into using Dropbox Passwords, you need to migrate to another password manager right away. The service will become read-only on 28 August 2025, and all data will be deleted on 28 October 2025. To its credit, Dropbox has made it especially easy to switch to 1Password. Simply click the Dropbox Password extension in your browser and choose Migrate to 1Password. Create a new 1Password account or sign into an existing one, then follow the remaining instructions to import your passwords.
While 1Password offers the smoothest transition path, you can also migrate to Apple’s free and increasingly competent Passwords app. Export a CSV file from Dropbox Passwords by choosing Preferences > Account > Export. You’ll have to adjust the file’s columns and headers in a spreadsheet or a utility like Modern CSV (see “Modern CSV Lets You Manipulate CSV Files Directly,” 25 November 2024) because Dropbox exports Name, Username, Password, Notes, URL whereas Passwords requires Title, URL, Username, Password, Notes, OTPAuth. (Leave the last two columns blank.) Once you have a correctly formatted CSV file, you can import it into Passwords in macOS 15 Sequoia with File > Import Passwords from File. A similar export/import dance may be possible in other password managers, too.
Adam, love your phrasing in this post. Exactly my thoughts.
But it does bring up a good topic of discussion in my opinion. Password managers are so important, and the truly great options are so few.
Especially if one wants to do it entirely oneself for free or low cost (ie no third party services and subscriptions.)
And one reason there are few great options is so many companies seem to have identified it as a “growth market” with all the gross MBA mindset that term brings.
So few capable people want to actually make an amazing password manager for the users. Strongbox was one but they have now succumbed to the lure of AppLause.
So anyone want to volunteer any suggestions? Passwords is not there yet but I am very glad Apple makes it as for regular users it is so much better than what they were doing before, which of course was reusing passwords and all the bad things.
But for anyone beyond the basic user, it’s not anywhere close. Strongbox is still great but I can already feel it slipping away.
“And one reason there are few great options is so many companies seem to have identified it as a “growth market” with all the gross MBA mindset that term brings.”
I’d say any market that is regarded as a growth market by, as you say, “evil MBAs” will attract entrants, large and small, from startups to established companies. Success potential is success potential, no matter one’s professional training or academic background. And let’s not forget a lot of tech industry paragons of excessive and aggressive behavior, including Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Travis Kalanick, Mark Zuckerberg, and, yes, Steve Jobs never completed even an undergraduate degree.
“So few capable people want to actually make an amazing password manager for the users. Strongbox was one but they have now succumbed to the lure of AppLause.
So anyone want to volunteer any suggestions?”
I’m not a coder so I have been hoping to find the holy grail of password managers (trustworthy, low-cost, secure, and easy to use) for years. The closest I’ve encountered are macOS Keychain, Apple Passwords, and 1Password. None are perfect for me for varying reasons. I’ve also been interested in Password Safe for a long time as a regular reader of Bruce Schneier’s blog and books but there hasn’t ever been a Mac version with Schneier’s direct involvement.
I have been using Secure Safe (https://help.securesafe.com/) for many years now. Works great and on all platforms. The company is based in Switzerland, Europe. They have a free option for a limited number of passwords and paid options for more functionality.
My needs are rather simple and I accept some tradeoffs others might not… the first PW manager I used was 1Password and despite some early version glitches and rubbish support I stuck with it. I never moved to the subscription model and its version 6 is working fine on 15.2 and Sierra. It allows capabilities i like such as saving as pdf and exporting and syncing locally to a quite old iPad with an iPadOS version of 1PW, so I have various backups.
Its browser integration doesn’t work though, so there’s some copy-pasting involved when I login to sites.
I’ve also tried (at a point when I feared 1PW was not going to work anymore) printing all to pdf, selecting and copying all the text, plunking it into a TextEdit file and saving that in a pw protected disc image. Again, some downsides depending on use case but for me it worked fine. I moved some of the frequent use logins to the top of the document and simply used TextEdits Find command to find what I need. Again, fine for my case but ymmv.
Haven’t used Dropbox or Apple Passwords or any other comm’l product.
I’m using Heylogin, from a German company (read: entirely non-USA). At work we have Bitwarden which is also OK as it also allows you to run your own hosting, they even give you the code for it, and there’s an EU hosted option for corporates in the EU.
Heylogin is presently free for end users.
The reason I use that rather than Apple’s passwords is not because there’s anything wrong with it, I simply have to work across three different operating systems.
Another “wait, what?” moment in services tech. I’m just completing a migration out of Dropbox as my subscription expired yesterday after 15 years’ use. I had more awareness of Dropbox wanting to be my desktop storage space than I did of “Dropbox Passwords.”
Mike Isaacs had a piece published in New York Times on Aug. 4 that may explain much about why all these superfluous freebies are being precipitously withdrawn; he (in the voice of “some”) dubs it “hard tech.” In his view, Tech 2.0 is over, because everyone and their A.I. brother has all the soft tools and toys.
Here’s the article, and the link is free (no subscription required):
Adam and some other folks have mentioned 1Password, and I both agree with them and highly recommend it! Definitely a solid, reliable program which I have been using for many, many years. I did “move” to the subscription model, but I got it for a real good yearly rate: $19.77 versus the usual $35.88. For me, definitely worth it.
Thanks, Michael. I just checked my Credit Card Statements for May 2023, May 2024, and May 2025, and I did see the 3 for 1Password. So the most recent one seems like it will be the last one at the 50% discount. $35.44 a month is quite a lot. Have looked at Bit Warden previously, and it seems robust enough (and free). Would like to hear from other TidBits folks about Bit Warden. If they are good, then next April I’ll move from 1Password to Bit Warden (assuming 1Password does not offer me anything).
