gjPwd - My Second iOS App

gjPwd is an iOS app for generating secure, easy to use, passwords.

This is my second iOS app and is written in Swift, including user interface (no more Storyboards, apart from the Launch Screen). The UI is built using LBTATools v1.0.12.

Bart Busschots’ xkpasswd is a wonderful website for creating secure memorable passwords. Secure passwords generators are ubiquitous and a must have feature of any password manager. If you’re not using a password manager, you really should consider using one. The problem with a lot of generated passwords e.g. F7M6!uH_bN9QUtbd, is they are difficult to use if you ever have to type them in manually, rather than auto-filling from a password manager. Bart took inspiration from an xkcd web comic to write a password generator that creates passwords that are both secure, and memorable i.e. easier to enter manually.

Inspired by xkpasswd, in April 2019 I decided to create an app that would generate secure, memorable, passwords. Rather than use Bart’s open source XKPasswd.pm password generation library, I decided to implement my own Swift password generator that used Bart’s approach to generating passwords i.e. use a specified number of words, of specified lengths, from a dictionary, and applying the required transformation, separators, and padding.

By November 2019 I had a working app that, although not as feature rich as xkpasswd, provides all the functionality I need.

The complexity of the passwords generated by the app can be configured by specifying the number and length of words, separators and padding etc., or by selecting a pre-set password configuration e.g. Apple ID or security question.

Generated passwords are automatically copied to the clipboard of the iOS device and, if Universal Clipboard is configured correctly, will be copied to the Mac’s clipboard. This is useful for generating a password on an iPhone and pasting it into a website on a Mac.

I use gjPwd to generate all my passwords. I find it very useful, but I’m not sure I’ll ever release it to the App Store. Maybe if I rewrite it using SwiftUI. We’ll see.

First code cut April 2019, code ‘complete’ November 2019. Various tweaks since but unlikely to be anymore unless future iOS versions break the app.