Why would you want to keep your passwords away from iCloud Keychain?
I believe Bitwarden is the best free, open-source password manager available on the market. Migrating to a password manager (such as Bitwarden or 1Password) may be challenging for many people, especially for MacOS users because exporting existing passwords from iCloud is blocked. But is it? I did this operation myself some time ago and helped my relative recently, so I want to share the knowledge with the community.
So below I listed the procedures how that will help you with migration from Chrome and Safari.
Before you do any migration, make sure you are connected to a secure Wi-Fi network at home because you will be uploading the password file in raw format. There is a layer of encryption from HTTPS, but that may not be secure enough if in the public hotspot.
Migrating passwords from Chrome is pretty easy. If you didn't use Chrome on your Mac, you can skip this, and go to section 2.
Ref: https://nordpass.com/blog/how-to-export-chrome-passwords/
Warning: Import to Bitwarden can't check whether items in the file to import are duplicative of items in your Vault. This means that importing multiple files will create duplicative Vault items if an item is already in the Vault and in the file to import.
Ref: https://bitwarden.com/help/article/import-from-chrome/
Ref: https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/how-to-delete-your-saved-passwords-on-every-browser/
If you have been using iCloud Keychain, there is no simple solution here, unfortunately. However, there is still a hacky way.
Apple, for security reasons, doesn't allow exporting their keychain passwords through a dedicated feature, suggesting that a person would have to manually do it themselves, going through every password one by one.
There is an open-source script that automates this operation.
I have checked the script code in detail myself for integrity and tried all segments of the code to verify the performance before executing it. Before running the script I made sure the internet was disabled. I do advise you to read the script yourself and make sure that it makes sense to you before blindly running something that will run operations on your passwords. (Disclaimer: run at your own discretion).
Resource: https://1password.community/discussion/30286/mrcs-convert-to-1password-utility/p1
Tools: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/a3skeey2zqimdlv/AAD87q6N_EJZ1YoPe5SA35a1a?dl=0
Step 1: Download the mrc-converter-suite from the link above. (Credit to Mike Cappella)
Step 2: Copy-paste the file Get_Safari_Passwords.applescript onto your Desktop
Step 3: Enable in your System Preferences the accessibility access to Script Editor. Make sure you turn this off after you complete this operation.
Step 4: Turn off Wi-Fi.
Step 5: Run the script. Make sure your Safari window is always on top. Do not touch the mouse while the script is running. This will open each stored password and copy the field one by one into the file. All your output will be stored on the Desktop as a pm_export.csv file.
Step 6: Reformatting the file. We will open the file pm_export.csv through excel and change it to match the Google Chrome passwords format.
The image shows how the original file looks like:
Rename the headers of the columns in the following way: "name", "url", "username", "password".
Delete the "Additional URLs" columns.
This will make the file format identical to Google Chrome's format.
The image shows how the reformatted file looks like:
Save the file. Make sure the file format is still in CSV.
Step 6: Disable the permissions for Script Editor that were enabled in Step 3.
Step 7: Enable the internet.
Step 8: Import the file into Bitwarden through a web interface as if it is a Google Chrome passwords file format. Verify that the import operation was successful. It is a good idea to put the newly imported passwords into a folder on the Bitwarden, such as "Imported from iCloud".
Step 9: Delete the password file from your computer. Empty the trash.
Ref: https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/how-to-delete-your-saved-passwords-on-every-browser/
Now that you have imported the passwords from iCloud,
It still makes sense to have iCloud Keychain sync enabled to sync your Wi-Fi passwords, but don't use it for anything else because you have a dedicated password manager now.
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