Apple released open source Password Manager Resources for developers

Apple released its new ‘Password Manager Resources’ open source project that Apple says enables developers to “integrate website-specific requirements used by the iCloud Keychain password manager to generate strong, unique passwords.”

Apple’s iCloud Keychain generates strong passwords when creating new accounts much like other password managers. Now Apple’s Password Manager Resources is on Github, and is available to everyone.

The Apple Dev team behind the project says they are trying to make it so “creators of password managers can collaborate on resources to make password management better for users.”

• Password Rules: Rules to generate compatible passwords with websites’ particular requirements.
• Websites with Shared Credential Backends: Groups of websites known to use the same credential backend, which can be used to enhance suggested credentials to sign into websites.
• Change Password URLs: To drive adoption of strong passwords, it’s useful to be able to take users directly to websites’ change password pages.

Apple says there are three key selling points:

• By sharing resources, all password managers can improve their quality with less work than it’d take for any individual password manager to achieve the same effect.
• By publicly documenting website-specific behaviors, password managers can offer an incentive for websites to use standards or emerging standards to improve their compatibility with password managers; it’s no fun to be called out on a list!
• By improving the quality of password managers, we improve user trust in them as a concept, which benefits everyone.