What you need to know
- Google’s Password Manager gets new features.
- It can now be added as a home screen shortcut on Android devices.
- The functionality comes after a recent Google Play Service update.
- Google is also bringing on-device encryption for its password manager.
Google now lets you add its Password Manager to your Android home screen alongside other apps. The capability comes through a Google Play Services update recently released for Android devices. The new feature allows you to access or access your passwords faster instead of searching through the device or Chrome’s settings when you need to.
The search giant’s service may not be one of the best password manager options available – it’s still secure, encrypted, and synced with your Google account. Users can easily access them as they wish on both platforms, Android or iOS (from the Chrome app).
The new capability requires Android users to update Google Play Services to version 22.18 (reports 9to5Google† After installing the update, Android users can access Password Manager from their device by navigating to Settings > Privacy > Google Autofill Service > Passwords† From there, click on the gear icon at the top to enter additional settings, where you’ll find the “Add shortcut to your home screen” option. The last part is relatively similar to adding a web page to your screen from the Chrome browser.
The process seems clunky, but it’s still worth a try since you only have to do it once. While there is no option to add biometric authentication to access the Passwords shortcut, you still need the respective biometrics to verify the saved credentials.
The Google password manager is indeed a handy feature that gives you quite secure access to login to your banking sites, apps, services and other crucial websites. In addition to offering to store passwords, the service can also generate a secure password or keyphrase to give you the extra security needed for specific apps.
In other news, Google Password Manager has started offering on-device encryption, giving users additional protection (via 9to5Google† This seems to be available to users visiting passwords.google.com or through Google Chrome.
Encryption on the device is an additional security measure that ensures that only the user can unlock their saved passwords when set, using their Google account password or the screen lock option supported by biometrics/PIN/pattern. Not even Google can access them because they are stored on the device. However, Google warns that encryption on the device cannot be removed once it is set up, so users should be aware that they could lose access to all their passwords if they forget their account password.
You can visit Google’s support page to set up encryption on the device, although this doesn’t seem to be widely available yet.