Save Passwords And Login ID’s For Free On A Mac

How many ways can you say, Free Mac Software For The Holidays? There are plenty of holiday bundles of Mac software. The prices are low and the quality high. That’s almost free, but not quite.

In the free realm are many Mac utilities which serve a distinct need for those on a budget. Do you save Login ID’s and passwords on your Mac? Do you keep bank and credit card information on your Mac? If so, you need something secure to hold all that data. Secure. And free.

Secure Storage, Easy Access, Multi-platform, Low Price

Think of those four as something of a holy grail to secure important information. Easier said than done.

Achieving that goal for free isn’t so easy, but PasswordVault Lite (and Standard and Pro) is a place to start.

There should be a law that says any Mac software called ‘Lite’ should be free. PasswordVault Lite is free and does the basics quite well, if you don’t mind a Fisher Price interface that looks like a cast off from Windows ‘95, circa 1995.

The Lite version stores data with strong encryption, makes it easy to set up bookmarks for quick login to web sites, even creates complex passwords with just a click.

Overall, the basic interface is anything but intuitive, though it works despite the toy icons, plastered logo name, and obvious confusion. Remember, this is Lite.

Mousing over any element in the interface provides notes at the bottom of the PasswordVault window. One of the benefits of the PasswordVault family (Lite is free, Standard is not, Pro is definitely not) is the ability to save data across multiple platforms, Mac, Windows, and Linux. There’s even a version that runs off USB drives.

Preferences are straightforward, but lacking many options. Generate a more secure password, mask passwords, and even change skins and buttons on the window. Watch out. Retina burn ahead. The skins are gaudy.

True Value Sometimes Costs A Little More

I want to like Password Vault Lite (and the more expensive cousins) because it’s free, cross-platform, highly secure, and reduces the time required to login to web sites.

After all, there’s something to be said for the ability to synchronize important information across many machines, importing and using bookmarks from other platforms, and storing those many pieces of information that tend to get scattered on our Macs.

There are few such utilities that provide so many features and benefits and are cross platform. Fewer still have a classy instructional video to help you set up and get started. PasswordVault has that.

The Lite version is a bit dumbed down, supporting only 15 different services (the other versions are unlimited), but because of PasswordVault’s cross-platform capability, site licenses are quite reasonable.