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Comment by miggol | Hacker News Reader

Neat! I should try this. Been using pass since forever. Does it support autofill on Android?

GNU Pass is a great example of Unix-y interoperability for me. I sync the .password-store folder over to my phone with Syncthing, where the Password Store android app reads it. Password Store in turn talks to OpenKeychain for my encryption key with biometrics support. Changes are also synced back to my other devices. Each piece of the puzzle can focus on doing one thing and doing it well, even on Android!

Password store for android: https://f-droid.org/packages/dev.msfjarvis.aps/ Openkeychain: https://f-droid.org/packages/org.sufficientlysecure.keychain...

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Why not sync it via git? It’s way better, imo.

Thing is, I often create or update passwords from my phone. I have yet to find a good UX for committing and pushing those changes from Android. Though I would be interested in that, because I have little protection against accidental deletion now.

With syncthing it's just instantly everywhere whenever I add an account, no action required. That's particularly useful when I create an account on my computer, then have to scan an OTP QR code with my phone. By the time my phone's out of my pocket the fresh account is already in the store to save the OTP code into.

But both Android [1] and iOS [2] clients have git functionality built-in. You just swipe it up (for iOS) or press sync (and swipe too, don’t remember if it works on Android) and it syncs.

A couple of iOS notes:

- The iOS app has a nasty bug, when you have not the latest repo on your iPhone, it cannot merge changes. So I recommend syncing your repo first, and then add new passwords from your mobile. IIRC, Android has no issues with that, but I’m not sure here.

- If you have a complicated ssh key (I have gpg-key for that) the iOS client doesn’t work properly. Could also have issues with other keys. IIRC, it’s the iOS issue. So I use a very special iPhone-only key that I added to my GitLab repo, where my passwords are stored. I generated the key with `ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -m PEM -f /tmp/id_rsa` and transferred it to my iPhone via iTunes, to ‘pass for iOS’ application.

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[1]: GitHub: https://github.com/android-password-store/Android-Password-S... + Website: https://passwordstore.app/ + Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dev.msfjarvis.... + F-Droid https://f-droid.org/packages/dev.msfjarvis.aps/

[2]: GitHub: https://github.com/mssun/passforios + AppStore: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pass-password-store/id12058205...

I myself never add passwords from my mobile, but I use mobile for adding 2FA (scanning QR-code), so my workflow as follows: I make sure I pushed the changes from my laptop/desktop with `pass git push`, then I swipe up on my iPhone, and only then I add 2FA code by scanning the QR-code. Then I push changes back, `pass git pull` from my laptop/desktop and add 2FA one-time codes manually. That may sound weird, but actually that’s quite simple for me.

Syncthing may just work here, but for me, I don’t run Syncthing all the time, only when I need to sync some changes, which is infrequent for me. As well as my passwords, actually. I don’t care too much with my mobile, as I try to limit my smartphone usage and pick laptop whenever possible, so to avoid over-consumption of media (which is easier on a modern smartphone). But that’s just another story.

Thanks for pointing this out! This functionality has been right under my nose for ages without me noticing.

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