Is there a way to configure password auto-generation in Safari?

Question

Is there a way to change the auto-generated passwords Safari generates? Sometimes, websites don't allow long passwords, and sometimes they don't accept the dash symbol as a valid symbol, and in those cases, I would have to manually input something. In my case, I would also prefer longer passwords for some websites, e.g., my bank or brokerage account.

If it matters, I'm on the latest MacOS High Sierra.

Answer 1

I'm not aware of any way to do this in Safari, but you can always generate new passwords in System Preferences instead:

• Open Users and Groups preferences.
• Go as if to change your password.
• Click the key button next to the "New password" field. This will open the password generator.
• It generates a password for you, but you can edit it or even type in your own password, and it'll give you an estimate of how strong it is.
• Drag the password into the text entry field. (You can copy and paste it if you're not concerned about clipboard managers storing it, or clipboard-sniffing malware, but drag-and-dropping isn't any harder anyway.)
  • You can actually drag and drop text like this in almost any app! You need to click and hold for a moment before you start to drag, or it'll think you're trying to select.

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You can also do this in Keychain Access – just hit ⌘N to create a new keychain item and click the key button, and it shows the same password generator.

Answer 2

I’m not aware of any way to do this as the user of a site (the accepted answer provides a clever workaround, at least), but there are some resources for owners of sites to customize the password auto-fill behavior to match their site’s password rules here.

Also, there’s an open-source repository of various password rule “quirks” that Safari can use to customize rules for generation on sites that don’t support the default password auto-fill rules (and also allows for defining custom password change URLs and more).