CryptKey

Why I built a password manager

Google Password Manager warned me that one of my saved passwords had appeared in a data breach. It made me think about where my passwords actually live and who controls them. I wanted to understand how a password manager works from the inside, and to build one where the vault stays with the user instead of on a company’s server.

Building a vault with no server

• Vault stored in the user’s own Google Drive. There is no CryptKey server, so there is nothing of mine to hack
• Password generator for strong passwords
• Import from other password managers, so switching is easy
• Designed the UI with no design background, testing and redesigning until it felt simple to use
• Moved storage from my own database to the user’s Drive, removing the backend entirely
• My first app on the Play Store, published and maintained by me. The latest update supports Android’s 16 KB memory page size

Flutter, Dart, Google Drive API, Android