(Guide/Review) Swifty is an open source and offline password manager for Windows, MacOS and Linux

[mood]

Swifty is an open source and offline password manager for Windows, MacOS and Linux

 

Many people are switching from LastPass, and looking for suitable alternatives. The popular choice seems to be Bitwarden, though I prefer an offline tool like KeePass. But those aren't the only options available, there are many open source programs to choose from.

 

 

Swifty is an open source and offline password manager for Windows, MacOS and Linux. The best part about offline password managers is that you can start using them right away, without registering for an account.

 

 

When you run the program for the first time, you'll see options to setup a master password, or to import a database from an existing backup. Let's go with the new user option.

 

 

The program has a pleasant interface with two panes and a sidebar. The right pane displays 2 options: to create a new entry, and to import data from Google Drive. The latter creates a Swifty folder in your Google Drive account, and syncs your database to it, and this serves as a backup solution.

 

Note: Swifty doesn't work with Firefox Containers. I've set account.google.com (and all other Google sites) to open in the Google container. Even though I was able to connect Swifty to Drive using Firefox, it just kept giving some error. Then I tried the URL with Microsoft Edge, and it worked perfectly.

 

 

To get started, click on the + symbol on the sidebar, and you'll see some many text fields appear on the right pane It has options to enter the website's name, URL, your email address, username, etc. Fill up the form as required, when you come to the password field, hit the generate button to create a unique, strong password. Optionally, add a tag to a login which will help you search for the specific account quickly. It also supports TOTP (time-based one time passwords)

 

Note: The database is encrypted using Swifty's own encryption module (AES 256 GCM)

 

Hit the save button and your credentials will be saved to Swifty's vault. You can access the saved logins from the 2nd tab on the sidebar. Each field has a copy button next to it, which you can use to copy the data to the clipboard, and paste it in any program that you want to.

 

 

Swifty clears the clipboard automatically after 1 minute, I had to use a stopwatch to see how long it took for the autodelete to happen. There's no option to change the timer. To edit a saved login, click on the pencil icon, make your changes and hit the save button.

 

 

You may also store notes and your credit card information securely, to do this, select the corresponding tab on the sidebar, and then click on the + button. Swifty will automatically lock the database when it has been idle for a certain time, to protect your information from prying eyes. I used the stopwatch again, and it takes one minute to trigger. You can't modify this behavior either.

 

 

Click on the settings button in the bottom left corner of Swifty's GUI. In addition to saving your vault to your Google Drive, you can save a local backup of the vault.swftx on your computer. You may change your database's master password from the settings, if you forget it, there is no way to recover the vault's contents. The last tab in the Settings screen lets you define the Password Generation rules, you can use it to set the default length of generated passwords, and whether to include numbers, uppercase and special characters (symbols). The program runs from the system tray, and has a tray menu that can be used to can access the vault or lock it.

 

 

Swifty is a pretty good application, but it's not without flaws. There is no portable version available. The major drawback however, is that it does not support importing an existing database from LastPass, KeePass, Bitwarden, CSV file, etc.

 

There are no mobile apps or browser extensions for Swifty yet, though they are in the road-map. This means you are currently limited to the desktop programs. The fact that it doesn't have autotype (or autofill), makes it a bit tedious to use the password manager.

 

Landing Page https://getswifty.pro/

 

 

Source: Swifty is an open source and offline password manager for Windows, MacOS and Linux