firefox password manager: remember passwords in firefox also view, save and delete them

Most modern web browsers provide the ability to save and remember passwords for various web sites. Mozilla Firefox is no exception, it gives you the ability to save and sync your passwords across multiple devices. Firefox Password Manager is a feature in Mozilla Firefox which allows you to store and use usernames and passwords for multiple websites.

In order to remember passwords in Mozilla Firefox, you will need to enable the Firefox Password Manager. You will also need to know how to perform several different operations if you want to customize your password configuration.

Enable/Disable Password Management

The password management feature or the password manager is enabled by default in most cases. In the odd case that it has been disabled, you might want to know how to (re)enable it. This can be easily done from the Preferences dialog

Access the Preferences dialog from either the menu bar or the tool bar. From the menu bar, Go to Edit -> Preferences. From the toolbar, Click on the Open Menu button (usually the right most) and click on the Preferences option.

  1. In the Preferences dialog, Click on Security Tab
  2. Look for the section named Passwords
  3. Check or enable the option Remember Passwords for sites
  4. Close the dialog to enable Password Manager

Firefox Password Manager

You can completely disable the password management feature in Firefox using exactly the steps mentioned above. De-Selecting or Un-checking the Remember Passwords for sites check box in the Security tab will disable the password manager.

Enable/Disable Prompt to Remember Passwords

Every time you enter new username information into a webpage, the browser will prompt you asking whether or not to save this information. If you want to disable this prompt, then your option is to disable the password manager entirely. You should follow the same steps in the section above to disable password management.

You can always re-enable it by enabling the password manager, again by following the steps above. If you want to disable only the prompt, but keep the password manager enabled, thus auto-saving the passwords then you will need to modify the Firefox source code. That is beyond the scope of this post.

Sometimes, you would want to blacklist only specific websites from storing the passwords. The easiest way to do this is when the browser prompts you to save the password. You can choose the option to never prompt again for the website.
When the browser prompts to save the passwords, it also provide options to disable the prompt for specific websites. The remember password prompt provides three options…

Remember Password: This will save and update the password for this website. This is the default option.
Never Remember Password for This Site: The current website domain is added to the exceptions list, and you will never be prompted to save password for this website.
Not Now: Skip this one time. This will prompt again when you visit the website and enter the username again. This is useful if have multiple login information for the site and want to save only some of them but not all.

Enable a (disabled) website

Once you have disabled the prompt for a website, it will never prompt you again for that page. If you want to then save the password for this website at a later point in time, then you will need to (re) enable the website by removing the site from the disabled/exceptions list.

Open the Preferences dialog again, and in the Preferences dialog

  1. Click Security Tab
  2. Look for Section named Passwords
  3. Click on the Exceptions button, next to the option to Remember Passwords
  4. Select the desired website in the exceptions list
  5. Click on Remove button
  6. Close Preferences dialog

View Saved Passwords

You can view the list of all saved passwords in the browser. This is usually useful if you have forgotten your password for a website. In order to view the passwords, again open the Preferences dialog and

  1. Click Security Tab
  2. Look for the Password Section
  3. Click on Show Passwords button, at bottom of that section
  4. In the Saved Passwords dialog, click Show Passwords button at the bottom

Password Manager in Firefox

This will prompt you for master password, if you have set one. Even though it is not mandatory to set a master password, it is highly recommended. Setting a strong master password allows your passwords to be encrypted much more securely, making it harder to crack (though not impossible).

You can further filter this list by the website by using the filter bar at the top of the screen. Start typing in the filter bar and the list will automatically filter itself to display just the matching sites.

Delete Saved Passwords

The previously mentioned Saved passwords dialog is useful when it comes to selectively deleting passwords as well. You might need to delete passwords often on a per site basis, probably because you have changed the login information on the website, or because there is an obsolete information store for the website.

Follow the instructions in the previous section to open the Saved Passwords dialog,

  1. Select the website(s) that you want to delete (Note: there might be multiple entries)
  2. Click on the Remove button at the bottom
  3. Click Close button to close the dialog

Click on the Remove All button to remove all the saved passwords.