Chrome Story

Google Chrome has a built-in password manager. In this article, we will look at how to use Chrome’s password manager to save, edit and manage your passwords.

What is Chrome Password Manager

Google Chrome can save your user IDs and passwords and sync them across your other devices. This way you can set complex passwords for websites without worrying about memorizing them. Chrome can also automatically log you into these websites when you open them again.

Chromesync, the Chrome feature that syncs bookmarks, browsing history and more across all the devices that you have signed in using the same Google account, can sync your passwords as well. With this, any password that you save or modify on one device will instantly be available on all your other devices.

Enable Password Manager in Chrome

The built-in password manager is enabled by default. You can verify this by going to Chrome Settings > Autofill > Passwords. You can also directly access this page by visiting chrome://password-manager/passwords.

If “Offer to save password” is enabled, your password manager is turned on.

View Saved Passwords

To view saved passwords, go to Chrome Settings > Autofill > Passwords. You can also directly access this page by visiting chrome://password-manager/passwords.

You will see them under Saved Passwords. This view will show you the following for each entry:

• Website address
• Username
• Password

A password will be masked by default for security. To view the saved password, click the “eye” icon. You will be asked to enter your computer’s password. Enter the password that you use to log into the current computer.

View Saved Passwords on Android

To view saved passwords on Android:

1. Open Settings by tapping the three dots icon.
2. Click Passwords.
3. From the list of saved passwords, tap and select the account that you want to view the password for.
4. Click the “eye” icon next to the password.
5. On the unlock prompt, unlock your phone. The password will be displayed.

Tip: You can copy the password by tapping the paper stack/copy icon next to the “eye” icon.

View Saved Passwords Hidden Under Asterisks

With Chromesync enabled to save all your passwords, chances are that you do not remember many of your passwords anymore. That’s what happened to me.

You can always go to the settings menu of Chrome to view all saved passwords. But what if you could let Chrome show you the actual password instead of those asterisks on the page itself?

Yes, that’s possible.

Note: This is not Chrome-specific. 

Here is how you do it:

1.  Right-click the password field and then choose “Inspect Element.”
2. This will open the document inspector window
3. On the “input type” line, replace the word“password” with “text”.
4. The password will now be displayed as plain text.

On some pages where I tried this, I couldn’t use right-click. The keyboard shortcut for the Chrome Inspector helped me out there. Pressed F12 and I was good to go.

Remove Saved Password

To remove a saved password from the password manager:

1. Go to Chrome Settings > Autofill > Passwords. You can also directly access this page by visiting chrome://password-manager/passwords.
2. From the Saved Passwords list, click the three dots icon against the password that you want to delete.
3. Click Remove.

Export Passwords

We do not recommend exporting passwords from Chrome unless you have a particular reason to do so. With that note, here is how to export all your saved passwords from Chrome:

1. Go to Chrome Settings > Autofill > Passwords. You can also directly access this page by visiting chrome://password-manager/passwords.
2. Click the three-dot settings icon against “Saved Passwords”.
3. Choose “Export Passwords“

Manage Passwords Online

If you haven’t enabled encryption on Chromesync (which you should), you can manage your saved passwords online too.

To manage your saved passwords online, visit passwords.google.com and log in using your Google account.

For those who have enabled encryption, this is all you will see:

Adding Passwords Manually

Google is believed to be working on an option to add passwords manually to the password manager. However, we are not sure when this feature will be available for us to test.

Now, let us explore a few issues that you might face with the password manager.

Chrome not Asking to Save the Password

If Chrome is not asking you to save passwords for all websites, open chrome://settings/passwords on a new tab and check if “Offer to save passwords” is turned on.

If Chrome is not asking you to save passwords for a specific website, visit the same page and scroll down to the bottom of the page. Find “Never saved“.

If the website you are facing issues with is on the list, click the X icon against it.