Since the beginning of the year we’ve been on a roll adding new features to and improving our password manager app Codebook and we think it’s time to highlight some of the changes our customers might have missed. Some of the new features and improvements are platform-specific, and we’ll make notes below regarding parity.
Secret Agent – Actions and Run Default
Secret Agent is the feature in Codebook for macOS and Windows allowing you to insert your Codebook data into other apps, e.g. when you need the password to the website or VPN you’re logging into. Secret Agent has been around for a little while now, but among the immediate requests for improvement were a means to create custom fill-in behavior, and to have a default form-fill behavior (rather than inserting values one-at-a-time). The Secret Agent Action feature provides just that, and the Secret Agent window has a new button for running default actions (macOS keyboard shortcut: ⌘ R, Windows keyboard shortcut: Control R). For more information on how it works and video demonstrations, check out our updated documentation.
Find in Codebook
On a mobile device like an iPhone it’s annoying to have to leave the web page you’re on to go lookup your password in Codebook. Find in Codebook is a bit like Secret Agent but for iOS, allowing you to fill in forms in Safari with passwords stored in Codebook without leaving Safari. It’s an App Extension, available from the Action/Share button in Safari. Check out the demo vid for help enabling and using the feature.
Fingerprint Recognition
We’ve had the ability to login to Codebook for iOS with Touch ID for some time now. Our Android customers have been quite vocal about it! Codebook for Android now supports fingerprint login on supported devices.
Translations / Localization
Codebook for Android and iOS now support localization, providing translations of its interfaces and dialogs for six languages: English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, and Spanish. This is still pretty new; if you’re a native speaker of one of our translations and something doesn’t look right / is wrong, drop us a line to let us know.
Accessibility / Section 508
Codebook for macOS and Windows have been updated for better accessibility, providing keyboard navigation and support for voice-over and voice control on macOS and Windows (e.g. Jaws screen reader).
Merge Label
Have a messy labels list, perhaps from an import of your data? Want to merge your Mail, email, and eMail labels into one label to rule them all? Now you can! In Codebook for macOS and Windows, select the File menu > Customize Labels. Then select the label you want to nuke and click the Merge Label button. Codebook will prompt you to select the new menu item. All fields assigned to the old label will be assigned to the new one.
Multiple Selection
Codebook for macOS now supports selecting multiple entries and categories simultaneously in the main window, making various editing and management options more convenient and powerful. Need to drag a whole bunch of entries into a new category? No problem. Coming soon to Windows.
Diceware Passwords
Diceware is a really popular scheme for generating strong random passwords that you might want to remember in case you don’t have Codebook with you. Codebook’s password generator provides support for Diceware passwords on Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows. After rolling this out with the original Reinhold word list we decided to add the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s improved word list and make it the default, which generates passwords that we find quite a bit more memorable. In addition to the Reinhold and EFF variants we’ve also added Spanish, French, German, Italian, Danish, Swedish, and Japanese lists.
Password Weakness Warnings
Guaranteeing that a password is strong can be a tricky business, there’s a bit of pseudo-science involved. But checking that password for sanity and weakness? Not quite so hard! We have integrated the fantastic zxcvbn library created by the developers at Dropbox which provides an excellent basis for checking passwords for known weaknesses. Codebook will warn you while editing passwords if they are too short, use common words, or have other potential problems. Available now in iOS and macOS, coming soon to Android and Windows.
New Views: Favorites, Journal, and History
Codebook 3 added note entries along with the ability to mark entries as favorites. We added the Journal view to display the former all together and the Favorites view to display the latter, on all four platforms we support. From there we added the History view in macOS, which displays your entries grouped into when they were last updated, providing a window into when you last reset a password, a helpful feature in turbulent times. We don’t plan to add History to the mobile apps right now but we will be adding it on Windows. Update 5/11: Codebook for Windows now has the History view as well.
Microsoft Edge Support
The borg are back with a brand new browser! Codebook for Windows now includes support for inserting data from Secret Agent in Microsoft Edge browser.
More Improvements
We’ve been making tons of small usability improvements with almost every update and we’ve been updating Codebook frequently. You can keep up with our changes over here. And as always, feel free to make suggestions!