Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you four ways
to store secure information on your Mac without any third party apps.
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So let's say you're using the Password Manager that's built-in macOS. The one you see in Safari
and the one you see in macOS Monterey. You'll also see it in System Preferences.
You can use that to store passwords for websites. But what if you have some information you want to
store that isn't a password to a website. Like maybe a padlock code or a safe code
or your ATM pin. Something like that. In a third party password manager they have
places for this. Little notes that you could create. But i f you're not using
a third party manager here are four ways to do it with just what you have on your Mac.
First what if you just want to use Password Manager as it is.
So you could go into Safari, Preferences and then to Passwords and then Authenticate
and here's your list of passwords. In macOS Monterey you'll be able to do this in System
Preferences as well. Now if you want to add your own you can add but it's going to ask you for
a website, user name, and password. However, you could just fake this. For instance use the website
Example.com and it will accept that. Then give it something like a name that's descriptive
of whatever it is for the user name. These are to the two things you'll be able to see
easily. The password is the thing that's kind of hidden. So if you're going to do a safe code
maybe use something like this. You could just add the password and then you could see it here.
Notice that the password part is always hidden until you select it. Then you could go to Detail
to edit that information. It's kind of weird to use example.com or something like that as the
domain name but if you're always consistent, like maybe just use something like notes.me
or some website that doesn't exist then you can easily search for those. Then the great
thing is that they will be synced over iCloud so you could see them on your iPhone as well.
Now another way to do this is to use Keychain Access.
It's the original app where you can access things like those Safari passwords. In fact if I go to
iCloud here and look at Passwords I'll be able to see all of my Safari passwords plus a lot of
other things as well. But if you go to Secure Notes that's the place for
you to just create these little notes so you could add a new one, call it what you want,
and add what you want. The great thing is that you could have a lot of text here. So for something
like this you may want to add instructions on how to use this code or you may want to include
a whole bunch of different information. Maybe padlocks and just all the padlock codes for
the padlocks that you have. Then you can add it and always access it again. Of course you have
to be logged in in order to access this at all. So you log into your Mac. Go to Keychain Access
and then you go here and you could view something like your safe code. You have to even click Show
Note and you can see it's asking you for your password again. So you enter in your user password
and then it reveals the note and you can edit it.
Now another place you can lock away information is in the Notes App. So in the Notes App you
can create a new note. So let's call this one secure codes or something. In here I can do like,
you know, safe and put the code for that. Maybe padlock and something like that.
I can save all of these and now actually just having them in Notes maybe enough because in
order to get to Notes you first have to log into your user account. So it's not like just
anybody can get access to these. But if you really want you can go here and log the note.
Here you have to set a password and you set it up and now you can see it's unlocked and I can
read it. I could close it or if I just were to Quit Notes and go back into it
all of the locked notes are now locked. You have to enter the password. Now it's unlocked. Now all
of your locked notes lock with just one password. It's not a password per note. So what you unlock
you have unlocked all of your notes there. So it's an extra layer of protection.
Another way to do it is to just have a document that's locked with a password. You can do this in
Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. Using Numbers kind of makes sense here although you could certainly do
it in Pages. It's just a document with whatever you want. But in Numbers here you could do
something like safe and padlock and other things. Include the code. Set this up with headings here,
notes, things like that. Style your list as you want and then Save it wherever you want.
I'll just put it on the Desktop here as an example. Now, of course, the only way to access
this document is if you're actually logged into your Mac. So that may be enough. But if it's not
you could always go to File, Set Password and set a password for this document.
You can say Remember to Keychain. So as long as you're logged in it will automatically open up
the file. But if you take that file and then you move it to another place, like a Cloud
location or you save it to a flash drive or you give it to somebody else, they can't open it up
without the password. So now here's the file. You can see it has a padlock. If I double click
to open it it's going to ask me for the password before it reveals the contents. Now I can get in.
So there are four pretty simple straight forward ways to secure information like a
note or a combination or something like that on your Mac without having to get
any third party software. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.