Apple has open-sourced a set of tools for developers as part of its Password Manager Resources project in an effort to increase the compatibility of password managers across popular websites.
“The Password Manager Resources open source project allows you to integrate website-specific requirements used by the iCloud Keychain password manager to generate strong, unique passwords. The project also contains collections of websites known to share a sign-in system, links to websites’ pages where users change passwords, and more,” explains Apple.
According to Apple, the project strives to offer three major benefits – resource sharing, public documentation of website-specific behavior, and to improve the quality of password managers.
- Sharing resources, all password managers can improve their quality with less work than it’d take for any individual password manager to achieve the same effect.
- By publicly documenting website-specific behaviors, password managers can offer an incentive for websites to use standards or emerging standards to improve their compatibility with password managers.
- Improving the quality of password managers, we improve user trust in them as a concept, which benefits everyone.
The project also documents several website-specific “quirks” such as password rules, websites with shared credential backends, and URLs for changing passwords.
Password rules refer to the criteria set by websites for passwords. For instance, if you would like to create an account on AliExpress, the password should be of minimum length 6 and maximum length 20.
‘Websites with shared credential backends’ file contains a list of groups of websites that are known to share the same credential backend. Meanwhile, the ‘Change password URLs’ file highlights the closest possible link from which users can change their password.
You may read more and access the resources provided through the project on Apple’s GitHub page.
