The Best Password Managers For Android

Protecting your online accounts is more important now than ever — and using a password manager is one of the easiest and most effective ways to do it. It's simple: Reusing passwords puts you at a heightened risk for hacking. If someone discovers your password at just one website — via any sort of breach, be it large-scale or targeted — they can then use that same password to crack into your accounts at countless other places. It happens all the time. In a world that requires passwords for just about every online activity you do, most security experts agree: The secret to keeping yourself safe is relying on long, random passwords (in conjunction with two-factor authentication, when it's available). Remembering even a few such passwords is difficult enough, but doing so for dozens or hundreds of sites and services is nigh impossible for mere mortals. And that's where the password manager comes into play: It makes it possible to generate and keep track of all that info without needing a Rainman-caliber brain. With a password manager, you need to remember just one master password, and the manager creates and remembers the rest.

Figuring out which password manager is right for you, however, isn't so easy. But I'm here to help. I've spent a significant amount of time using each of the major password managers available for Android (using a Google Nexus 6P phone with Android 8.1 Oreo software for all of my testing). Here are my recommendations. When you use all the major Android password managers back to back, one thing becomes immediately clear: LastPass is in a league of its own. The app is intuitive and easy to use, and — critically — it works consistently well across the entire Android experience. At its core, LastPass makes it super-simple to store sign-in info for apps and websites and then to automatically fill in your credentials whenever you're prompted. LastPass intelligently utilizes Google's Oreo-level autofill function in combination with Android's accessibility system to provide quick and reliable responses anywhere a sign-in prompt appears. If your device doesn't yet have Oreo, LastPass will rely solely on the accessibility system for all of its field-filling work.

LastPass works equally well in apps and websites, thanks to its effective use of Oreo's autofill function. Beyond the basics, LastPass is packed with useful options. Speaking of browsers, LastPass has excellent integration with all the major desktop offerings — as well as native app options for Windows and Mac, if you prefer — so keeping your info accessible across multiple platforms is painless. LastPass uses its own secure cloud storage, with device-level encryption, for syncing all data. You can take advantage of the service's core features, including multi-device access, free of charge. 48 per user per year. If you want more control over where your data is stored, 1Password is the way to go. The service allows you to keep your info in its own cloud servers for simple syncing, just like LastPass, but it also provides options for using Dropbox, iCloud, or even a direct Wi-Fi connection for syncing between devices. Those extra options come at a cost, though — both in terms of actual dollars and in terms of the experience you'll receive. 96 per user per year for pro business plans with advanced access control.

And despite the additional dollars, using 1Password on Android just isn't particularly pleasant — especially compared to the standard LastPass establishes. It applies to the app's lack of common sense in detecting what login info is appropriate for any given situation. Signing into Twitter required five cumbersome steps with 1Password, for no apparent reason. It even applies to the service's desktop browser extensions, which may not be Android-specific but are going to be part of the overall picture for most people. Plus, instead of prompting you to save a username and password via a post-sign-in pop-up, as LastPass does, 1Password's desktop extensions make you click a little icon within a username or password field and then select to save from there. Like I said, it's all quite clunky — but if data storage options are critical for you, it's still your best bet. Wait — what about all the other Android password managers,