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Am I the only person on Earth that needs sharing of passwords among my family? Any time folks bring up password solutions, they are always missing this requirement for me.

1Password is a life-saver in this regards. All my kids have their own vaults but for the little ones I have them use a shared vault between my wife and me so we have access to their passwords. I can also easily share passwords for services like Netflix so the kids don’t have to bug me.

It has been great for teaching kids about password hygiene (what makes for a good password) and management (don’t reuse passwords!).

And it being cross-platform is great for my older kids with gaming PCs.



Bitwarden lets you do this with an 'Organization'. Free to share things between two accounts, looks like $40/yr to share between up to 6 users.


Free if hosting Vaultwarden yourself.


But then your family rely on you for problems, so if anything happens to you, they potentially lose access to their passwords.

Self-hosting is great, for as long as you're around to provide support.


> Am I the only person on Earth that needs sharing of passwords among my family

No, and the article specifically discusses that use case and the fact that iCloud keychain doesn't support it.


A 1pass team w/ my wife was a huge level-up.


Same, anytime the family creates a new account that everyone else should have access to (utilities, streaming services, bank information, pass codes, etc) we just create it in the shared vault. It’s a game changer.


Yep, same here. Honestly can't imagine living without it. [Wrings hands as he thinks about 1password's venture funding]


Our company utilizes 1Password, which means all of our employees have family accounts. As you said, it is SUCH a huge game changer for my wife and me. Honestly don't know how / why I didn't pursue such a solution before hand. It was always 'let me send you a one time password' or 'I can export that key'. What a mess.

Shared vault FTW!


>Am I the only person on Earth that needs sharing of passwords among my family?

I needed to share my Netflix password back in the day. My random alphanumerical 32-character password with special characters drove my family up the wall though. But in general, passwords are for personal use only.


I've been using bitwarden for that, the vaultwarden server is selfhosted which is what I do, or you can buy their fairly cheap premium version.


Same. Bitwarden (with self-hosted vaultwarden) so far seems to be a great solution. I had ben using `pass` for many years, but the lack of sharing functionality is what finally got me looking at other options.


That’s interesting. I don’t share any passwords with family and have taught my kids to share passwords with no one (written in a sealed envelope as backup).

I don’t like shared passwords although if I really had to, I would just enter it once and let iCloud save it to their account. Stinks if I have to change the password, but I almost never change passwords.


I definitely appreciate the 'security forward' approach... but what about end of life planning or general 'dad's in a comma and XYZ needs to happen'?

1Password with a 'parents vault' that my wife and I share has been a life changer for coordinating family access to important accounts AND ensuring solid passwords are being used.


I have a piece of paper with my passwords sealed in an envelope stored in a safe place. A few trusted individuals know where that is.

This is much more reliable and durable than having 1Password still be around when I need it.


I don’t share passwords with family, they all know good password hygiene though and use generated passwords for all their services. For end-of-life scenario apple does have digital legacy https://digital-legacy.apple.com/


Speaking as someone who has lost six family members and managed four of those estates since 2019, these digital legacy features are generally incomplete or developed with little view toward reality. Edit: they’re often also not setup by the user or if they are, they’re not reliably updated.

Apple’s implementation, for example, starts a timer that will eventually nuke the account, and it doesn’t provide access to end-to-end encrypted data. That data specifically includes iCloud Keychain, which many people use to store their credentials.

I understand the privacy reasons for that, but when we die we are leaving behind increasingly large or complicated estates of accounts, services, apps, and devices with various and sometimes unpredictable safeguards. Having a loved ones actual credentials has been invaluable every time I’ve managed an estate.

I absolutely understand what you’re saying and I don’t necessarily disagree with it. But break glass access to credentials has proven important in my experience. Especially where continuity of that access is relied upon by others.


What about Netflix or Hulu ?


My iCloud is set up for end of life (Legacy I think they call it?). The recipients would then get iCloud passwords and my 1Password vault.


Coma is not "end of life". So your family must either euthanise you or wait for you to wake up to access the passwords?


I mean if you want family to have access to your accounts when you’re in a coma then you need to set up power of attorney beforehand. Or they can get a conservatorship.

My password file is not really a big concern if I’m in a coma as they’ll need other legal powers my passwords can’t help with. Even with passwords, they aren’t legally allowed to spend funds without power of attorney. And if they have power of attorney they can get passwords.


I agree that is one of the big issues with keychain. You can share keychain items with people but it is awkward.


Are you referring to Airdrop password and passkey sharing?[1] That’s the only way I can find other than manual copy/paste.

Also, I very much doubt if I later change the password I shared via Airdrop that it will update on the other person’s device… which is half the point.

[1]: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/share-passkeys-passwo...


Yeah, that’s how I share with my wife. I don’t anticipate that it would stay in sync if I updated it, but I can’t say that I’ve tried. Do you regularly rotate passwords?


No, but it does happen that passwords get updated, and the beauty of 1P is that you just save it, and then whoever has it gets the updated one. I share passwords with as many as 4 people, so it’s practically impossible to keep everybody in sync manually.


> Am I the only person on Earth that needs sharing of passwords among my family?

No, and it's equally bizarre to me that I can't share selected Contacts with my Family account. It would make keeping track of, say, the details of my kids' friends' parents.


Not at all. Bring on the shared family iCloud Note. lol


You can share folders in Notes


Yes, I think the joke is that they don’t make a very secure “vault” for sharing passwords.


1Password with son, wife, father and mother... life saver.




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