Generate a QR code for password field

[MuhammedKpln]

When you have long and complex password that you want to share with you're friends or family, it's a annoying, Instead we could generate a QR code and share that qr code with people instead.

[keepassium]

Thank you for the suggestion! I will consider this.

[jootuom]

+1 on this one.

In light of the recent $security_vendor news, it would be great to be able to directly generate a QR code or barcode from KeePassium so you could share credentials between devices or even use a barcode scanner to input them to another device directly.

[keepassium]

@jootuom , thank you for the ping!

Can you please tell me a bit more about your intended use case?

• Do you need to share credentials to other mobile devices? Separate fields or whole entries/groups?
• Or you mostly need to type passwords into computers? (Do you plan to get a barcode scanner?)
• When was the last time you needed to do this? How did you do that?

Sorry if questions sound a bit generic, I just want to better understand the problem before jumping to solve it :)

[jootuom]

Sure - the use case I came up with is almost exactly what my original article mentioned...

Personally I've already been storing my BitLocker recovery keys inside KeePassium, they're like 50 characters long so a real pain to type or copy, but you can input them quite easily by using the iPhone camera's OCR function to read them in from a laptop screen...

The only problem has been outputting them from KeePassium, that requires manual typing which - as mentioned - is a pain because the keys are like 50 characters long. With a barcode scanner however, it would be a breeze.

I can also envision a use case where - if you don't want to (or can't) install the full KeePass software on a computer and expose your whole database to it - you could use a barcode scanner to type in individual passwords as needed from your phone.

Admittedly it might be a niché use case for someone to invest in a barcode scanner for this :) - they appear to not be that expensive at all though...

OP mentions the more (probably) mainstream scenario - if you want to share credentials between devices/people, reading in a QR code from one device to another would make it really easy. Actually, this method could even be used with laptops if they have a selfie webcam.

Anyway, if KeePassium supported generating QR codes from entire credential entries or/and just individual (password) fields, this could be supported. There's QR (and oldschool barcode) libraries readily available so it shouldn't be a massive effort to add support for this. Of course UI code is always the "hardest" / most effort.

[keepassium]

@jootuom, thank you for the detailed answer, it is very useful. As you said, implementation is straightforward, the main effort would be the UI. So this is on the roadmap, I just am a bit sceptic about real utility of this feature.

The sharing scenario sounds plausible and straightforward. Like something someone might need. This "someone but not me" is a textbook symptom of a bloatware feature. (This issue is 1.5 years old and there are two people requesting it, for different reasons.)

Regarding the scanner, I just wonder if this would really be used outside the special events like "CrowdStrike aftermath". One would need to buy the scanner, and have it around (or spend time to find it among other things). If this is something used 2-3 times a years, wouldn't it be easier to just type everything?

[xobs]

I’m coming to iOS from android. I’ve subscribed to KeePassium, and I’m incredibly happy with it. It’s a fantastic piece of software.

one thing Android has is the ability to tap on a wifi connection and generate a QR code for other users to scan. It makes it very easy to share wifi networks.

since iOS appears to lack this feature, I think it would be good to store wifi passwords in KeePassium. A long press ought to have it recognized by the system as a wifi password and let you load it into a phone that way. And you can open KeePassium to share the password with other users.

[keepassium]

@xobs , thank you for your input. QR codes for Wi-Fi credentials need to have a specific format. KeePassium has no way to distinguish a password for Wi-Fi network from a password for something else, so the app would generate a code containing only the password.

So you can store Wi-Fi passwords in the app, but you would need another tool to generate QR codes for quick Wi-Fi onboarding.

one thing Android has is the ability to tap on a wifi connection and generate a QR code for other users to scan.

Oh, you can do that on iOS too. For two months already. Using this year's iOS 18. No comments 🤦

[xobs]

Thanks! I'll go re-install Passwords.app then. I hadn't seen any mention online of generating wifi passwsords on iOS, only apps that generate the QR codes, so that's what I thought the situation was. Hence my request for the feature.

I think it would still be possible, and indeed someone is adding support for this very feature in keepassxc: keepassxreboot/keepassxc#10000

But with the feature now in iOS 18 this becomes slightly less interesting to me.

[keepassium]

I think it would still be possible, and indeed someone is adding support for this very feature in keepassxc: keepassxreboot/keepassxc#10000

That someone describes KeePass with a plugin. In contrast, KeePassXC maintainer said "Highly unlikely we would implement this", citing the same inability to distinguish different types of entries.