KeePassXC is a password manager, used to save all your accounts in one secure file. Here is a tutorial on how to install KeepassXC and use it in the best way possible.

In this guide, we are going to:

• install the latest KeepassXC version
• install the browser plugin and activate it
• create new entries from a registration page

Installation

Get KeepassXC from the official website:

https://keepassxc.org/download/

It’s available for macOS, Windows, and different Linux systems. From the same page, install the browser extension.

Create your first password file

When you start KeepassXC for the first time, you can create a new database:

Give your database a name. You can add a description if you have multiple databases:

You can leave the default settings, but I recommend increasing the decryption time to 2–3 seconds. This makes it harder to do brute-force attacks against the database password.

Choose a long and memorable password. My suggestion:

• choose a long random sentence
• avoid a password that is found in books, movies, or other media
• make it weird, so you can memorize it easier
• include all types of characters: lowercase, UPPERCASE, Numb4rs, and Symb#ls (remember that spaces are also special characters)

Some examples (please do not use these):

• I want 4 blue Roses, and 12 yellow horses
• Why?? Why is this happening, #44?
• Hey there! Give me your 99 passwords.

Save the database file in a folder of your choice:

And you are done! Now you can create new entries.

Pro-Tip: Get the most important person or significant other in your life to use a password manager, and exchange your database passwords (put yours in their database, and they put theirs in yours). If anything ever happens, and you need to access their information, it will be there for you.

Create your first entries

Starting from the open database, either:

• right-click and select New entry, or
• press Ctrl-N, or
• press the ➕ button

Here is the Edit dialog that you will use most:

The most important field:

• Title: select an appropriate title that is used when you search for entries
• Username: the username for the website/service. You can leave this empty.
• Password: the password for the website/service. Here, you can also press the 🎲 to make KeepassXC create one for you (see below)
• URL: Put here the whole URL where the login needs to be put (https://example.com/user/login/, or just the domain https://example.com.
  • You can later use this link to open the page from KeepassXC
• Write anything that you need to know in the Notes section.

Press OK to confirm, and the entry will be saved. Now you can use the created entry to copy the username and the password, and fill in a login screen.
Select the entry, and either:

• right-click → Copy Username
• right-click → Copy Password

And paste it into the login field with Ctrl-V (or ⌘-V on macOS).

If you want to create safe passwords, you can do it right from KeepassXC.

Generate a random password

If you choose the dice 🎲 symbol in KeepassXC, the random password generation dialog pops up. Here you can select a password length and which characters should be included, and it generates a new password whenever you press the “refresh” button in the top right.

Press on the eye symbol if you cannot see the password. Once you are happy with your random generation, press “Apply password” to have it copied to the entry you opened before.

Once you have created some entries with your most used accounts, we need to configure the browser to be able to make KeepassXC paste the password automatically into the appropriate fields.

Configure Browser integration

Now we don’t want to copy and paste all passwords manually. Ideally, we want the computer to recognize the website and paste it into the login field.
This is what the browser extension is needed for! Install it for your browser:

For Firefox, this looks like this:

After installing the extension, we need to configure it. For this, find the plugin and add it to the toolbar.

To connect KeepassXC to the browser, follow the following tutorial:
https://keepassxc.org/docs/KeePassXC_GettingStarted#_setup_browser_integration

Configure KeepassXC to connect to the browser

To configure KeePassXC, perform the following steps:

1. Open the KeePassXC application on your desktop and navigate to Tools > Settings.
2. Click the Browser Integration option on the left-hand side (1). The following screen appears:

Select the browsers you want to connect to, and go to the Advanced tab:

Select the above options and press OK to save the settings.

Next, open your browser and press on the icon, then on Connect.

Enter a name for the connection (this is useful if you have multiple databases) and confirm the connection by clicking on Save and allow access:

Pro-Tip: If you want to know if the browser integration works, visit a website with a login (username / password fields), and you will hopefully notice a small icon in the input field:

Creating new entries from the browser

If the browser configuration is all set up, we can even create new KeepassXC entries when we register for a new account online. When you enter any data into a login or registration form, KeepassXC-Browser asks you if you want to save this. If you select “New”, it creates a new entry in your password database, along with the URL of the website and the data you entered:

You can test this below. Enter any data (it won’t get saved on this page) and see how the KeepassXC extension reacts to it.

Email / Username

Password

Repeat Password

Register

No account will be created, the data you entered will not be processed further

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That’s it for today! As you can imagine, there are lots of features we have not mentioned here, so feel free to check out more settings of your password manager. If you enjoyed this tutorial or have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below.

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Photo by Cookie the Pom on Unsplash