The PassVault program implements an application that saves passwords encrypted with a main password. It also generates new passwords with a given length and given parameters.
- Installation & Quick Start
- Generate a new password
- Manage your passwords
- Google Drive
- Settings
- API
- Credits
- Make sure you have java installed on your computer
- Download the latest PassVault_Installer.exe file, or a .jar file in the other versions folder
- Installer: execute the .exe file and follow the instructions (Attention: Probably your anti-virus program will warn you against this file because it isn't signed, you can ignore this warning for sure)
- .jar file: Execute the file (Note: application files will be created in the execution directory)
- After installing, you should be able to see the main window of the PassVault application:
This window is mainly divided into two parts:
- In the left part of the window you can generate new passwords by choosing the variety of characters and the length
- In the right part you can manage your passwords by searching, deleting, editing and copying to the clipboard
In the left part of the PassVault window you can generate a random and safe password. You can choose an interval of password lengths and which characters the new password should contain. The “Generate” button (who would have thought it) generates the password and displays it in the area below. By clicking on the “Save password” button, you open a new window where you can hand in some information about your password. A generated password will automatically be filled into the password field:
The button “Save and copy password” saves the new password with its information and copies it to your clipboard.
When you save a password for the first time, you´ll have to enter a main password with that all of your passwords will be encrypted (you can change it later, if you want to).
In the right part of the PassVault window you can manage your passwords. By entering some information in the “Search password” field, the table below will display all matching passwords. If you want to fill a password to a form fast, you can select an entry and click the copy button right above the table to copy it to your clipboard. If you are searching a password with the field and the table displays just one entry, you can also press enter to copy it directly to the clipboard.
The “All” button toggles between the searching mode and the display all mode. In searching mode, the table show the passwords matching to your input and in display all mode the table shows all your saved passwords.
You can also edit or delete the passwords that are displayed in the table. To edit a password, double-click on the information of the password that you want to edit and type in the new information. To save the edited password just press enter. To delete a password, select any information of the password and press “delete”. You’ll have to confirm the deletion.
To get a better view of your passwords you can sort them alphabetically by a parameter. Just click on the right of the head column of the sorting parameter and click once again to sort them in the opposite direction.
By clicking on the i(nformation) icon in the left top corner, you open the settings frame:
PassVault lets you synchronize your passwords with all of your devices via Google Drive. To get started, you'll have to click the button with the Google Drive icon in the top right corner. Now you'll have to log in to your Google Account and allow PassVault to save your passwords encrypted to your Google Drive. When you synchronize your passwords the first time, PassVault will generate a random drive password for you, with that your passwords will be encrypted in your Google Drive. You'll need this password later if you want to log in from another device. After logging in, PassVault will always synchronize your passwords with your drive on startup, after adding, deleting or editing a password or if you click the "synchronize with Drive" button in the top left corner of the main frame. If you forget your drive password, you'll be able to show it after clicking the "Your Google Drive password" button below and entering your main password.
You can easily change your main password by hitting the button. First, you’ll have to enter your current main password and after that you can change it by inputting the new one two times.
The box below the mentioned button allows you to change the display language of PassVault. At the moment, there are three available language packs: English, German and French.
PassVault also allows you to make a backup of your current saved passwords:
Simply click the first icon in the toolbar above the logo and select the directory on your computer to export all your passwords encrypted.
To import passwords from a backup file you have two options:
First, you can just drag it to the main frame.
The second option is pressing shift and do a right-click at the same time somewhere near the PassVault logo. In the opening dialog you can select the backup file.
After selecting the backup file, you’ll have to enter the main password with that the file was encrypted (your main password at exporting). If the password is correct, all passwords that are not already saved, will be added to your passwords.
Since PassVault 2.0, there's a feature that allows you to lock PassVault after a certain time of inactivity.
With the tick box you can enable/disable this feature. In the textfield you can enter the time after that PassVault will be locked in seconds. (Valid values between 10 and 3600)
Since PassVault 3.0, there's a feature that allows you to hide your passwords inside the application (show dots instead)
With the tick box you can enable/disable this feature.
If you want to be really secure, there's a feature with that not even the dots will be displayed when entering your main password.
This makes brute force attacks a lot more difficult because the attacker doesn't even know the length of your main password.
A pc can't produce real coincidence. He always picks a seed from a pre-given list, which every hacker can get access to.
To make sure that no hacker can predict which password will be generated the next time you press the "Generate" button. By enabling this feature, you create real coincidence yourself by hitting some random keys on your keyboard every time you generate a password. Now you can sleep calmly because you know that your passwords are unpredictable.
The help icon will lead you to this GitHub repository. If you need more help, you can contact us: [email protected]
From PassVault 2.2, other developers have the possibility of including PassVault to their projects. There's an API that allows other programs to get access to the saved passwords of the user.
The API has two features:
- Adding a password to the password list of the user
- Getting passwords matching to a keyword
The user has to enter his main password in both cases before something happens.
If you want to include PassVault via the API to one of your projects, you can simply execute the PassVault program e.g. via the command line and append help as an argument. You will get a list of all available commands and via appending help to a command, you'll learn how to use them.
The default installation folder of PassVault is C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Programs\PassVault
Example for adding a password to the users' password list:
Raleway font:
- Matt McInerney ([email protected])
- Pablo Impallari (www.impallari.com | [email protected])
- Rodrigo Fuenzalida (www.rfuenzalida.com | [email protected])
QOS.ch Logback framework
Google Inc Gson library
Google Inc Drive API
Thanks to B. for designing the finnik logo