PasswordSafe on OSX

I've been looking for a way to run PasswordSafe on OSX since I switched from Windows. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the Password Gorilla to run and I didn't really want to get into figuring out what's wrong. Then I remembered that PasswordSafe had released a Java version a while back. So you downlod the thing on OSX, run it and it doesn't work (on 10.5.7).

So I got down to the terminal commands to see what's up and found the error. It said

Cannot load 32-bit SWT libraries on 64-bit JVM

So... whatever, if you just find the right .jar and sub it in, you're probably good to go. This is true! Take

swt-3.5m6-cocoa-macosx-x86_64.zip

from here. Unzip it and place the SWT jar in

/Applications/PasswordSafeSWT.app/Contents/Resources/Java/

wiping out the SWT you have.

Then it will start just fine! The Java version is not pretty, but it does work on your real .psafe3 files. Definitely better than starting a VirtualBox every time you need a password...



Bill Hess from Pixel Privacy kindly noted that we update the link to PasswordSafe. While this was very generous, this entire article is irrelevant, but I updated anyway.

Bill also notes:

Whilst you are updating that I wondered if you’d add a link to my guide to why people shouldn’t reuse passwords - https://pixelprivacy.com/resources/reusing-passwords/?

Most people are becoming familiar with the idea of not reusing passwords but I don’t know if everyone realises why. My aim was to better explain the dangers of reusing passwords so that hopefully fewer people do it.

So don't repeat your passwords. Thanks for the correction and the article, Bill!