Chrome 62 for Android shows passwords (finally)
Google Chrome 62 for Android comes with a set of new features that Google announced on the official Chrome releases blog a couple of days ago.
The most important feature of the set, if you ask me, is the ability to view and copy passwords that users saved using the mobile web browser.
Earlier versions of the Chrome browser for Android did not come with the functionality, and the only option you had in those versions was to access passwords.google.com to manage saved passwords; this was not really the most user friendly way of handling passwords.
Google rolls out Chrome 62 currently but it may take weeks before the new build is pushed to all user devices.
Chrome users who don't want to wait can download the latest version of Chrome from APK Mirror. Please note that you need to enable the installation of Android apps from unknown sources in the security settings before you can install that version (as it is not distributed through Google Play but a third-party site).
Password management in Chrome version 62.0.3202.73 is available in the settings then. Here is how you manage passwords in Chrome for Android directly:
- Tap on the menu icon in the Chrome web browser, and select Settings from the context menu when it opens.
- Select Save passwords when the Settings page opens in the mobile browser.
- Google Chrome lists saved passwords on the page, but only the name of the site and the email address that you signed up with.
- You can tap on any of the saved passwords to open its details page. There you find listed the password as well.
- Tap on the eye icon to reveal the password, or on the copy icon instead to copy it (as well as the user name)
Chrome for Android provides the functionality only if the Android device is protected by PIN (or other supported forms of protection).
The two other features that Google highlighted are accelerated downloads, and an option to see data savings in the Chrome menu when the Data Saver feature is enabled. google did not provide any additional information on the download acceleration feature.
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Finally? This is a bad thing, b’cause Chrome stores the passwords in plain text in other words the database can be read out with proper tools. In my opinion there should be an option to temp. save passwords and of course to encrypt the database with a master password or YubiKey.
Passwords are synced with encryption.
Hi Martin, have you already reviewed WebBrowserPassView https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/web_browser_password.html?
I think it’s an extremely useful tool to view all your Chrome passwords.
At the same time, it’s very scary since it shows that such passwords are apparently not encrypted…