Just two weeks ago, evidence emerged that pointed to an upcoming ability in the Chrome password manager to edit saved passwords. While this sounds like a small thing, it is actually a large step from Google towards making the built-in password manager that Chrome offers a far more useful tool for many users. As we pointed out in that earlier post, this ability is currently only available on the web at passwords.google.com and not in Chrome’s password manager.
A couple of weeks ago, this new feature was just a collection of code commits, but thanks to the folks over at Tech Dows, we now know that this ability is available and working in Chrome Canary already. As we predicted in that earlier post, this feature looks to be part of Chrome and Chrome OS 86, so it may not be universally available until later in the fall.
If you’d like to take it for a test drive, download Chrome Canary on your Windows, Mac or Linux machine or switch over to the Canary Channel on your Chromebook (not recommended) and follow these steps:
- Enable the flag (chrome://flags/#edit-passwords-in-settings)
- Restart
- Open Chrome Canary
- Go to your settings
- Search for ‘passwords’ and select the Passwords settings section
- On the saved password of choice, click the 3-dot overflow menu and you’ll now see an edit option
- On the pop-up, simply change the password
This is a feature that, honestly, could end up in the next version of Chrome instead of hanging around for Chrome 86. There are likely few dependencies at play here and for this to go from a handful of commits to a fully-working addition in just a couple weeks tells me that this could end up arriving sooner than the fall. We’ll keep an eye out for it, but one way or another, Chrome will make password management much simpler in the next update or so.
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