If you visit a lot of websites, sign up for accounts and services, and even buy a lot of stuff online, it can sometimes be a pain to have to remember (and supposedly constantly change) all the logins and passwords. Having a password manager is a big help but sometimes it can be a bit expensive and inconvenient. The Microsoft Authenticator app, which already gives you multi-factor authentication and other security layers among other things is now bringing a password manager and autofill feature to the app.
The password manager feature can now be accessed on the preview or beta mode of the Authenticator app, which you’ll have to turn on yourself. Aside from creating, storing and remembering your passwords, it will also be able to autofill them when you’re signing in or logging in. The passwords can actually be synced across both mobile and desktop so you’ll never have to manually remember your various passwords when you keep switching to different devices.
Once you’ve turned the feature on, it will start entering passwords you’ve saved on the app. If you go to a website where you haven’t saved either the username or password, it will offer to let you save the information in the password manager so you’ll be able to easily log in there when you need it. The autofill part will be rolling out to Android users running on version 6 and above. However, it seems to be disabled for enterprise users.
There are of course several password managers out there, some of them built in to apps you usually use, so you shouldn’t run out options if you need to use one. And actually, you should already be using one as it’s one of the easiest things you can use to protect our accounts and passwords. It will be able to generate strong and complex passwords for you as well so you won’t have to resort to memorizing them.
No word yet on when the stable update for Microsoft Authenticator with the password manager will roll out to all users. So for now, you’ll have to make do with the preview version and of course give feedback since that’s one of the reasons why they’re in beta.
