I have generated a very strong password and put it in iCloud Keychain.
That way, it comes up as an option to autofill from the keyboard when required, and I just verify it with Face ID. This makes the password step much easier at no cost to security, in my opinion. In fact, it’s better since I can then use a much more complicated password than I would have to if needed to remember it and type it in every time.
Admittedly I have not had my Starling account for a few months now, but Android seemed fairly resolute in not offering (or being offered by the app) to save it. Maybe that has changed, but it was definitely not the reasonably slick solution you avail yourself if on iOS
When they first launched, they didn’t support this functionality, otherwise I could have lived with it. That’s how TransferWise do it too. I also don’t like the strange restrictions and requirements the password had to have. It made it both less secure and harder to remember. If keychain integration works out of the box now I’ll have to give it another go sometime down the line!
Thanks for confirming!
I may be recalling incorrectly but I’m sure it had a max length too, and a specified requisite for numbers, symbols and capital letters, which together reduce entropy and make it harder to remember. If that’s not the case and the only limitation is a minimum length (though keychain support makes all of that moot anyway) l’ll see if I’m allowed to re-open one later today ready to try after my 3 months with Monzo plus, if it doesn’t fulfil my needs!
That’s very good password advice. Straight out of XKCD, and it’s nice to see them endorse it. If the password now follows that guideline, I won’t have any issues with it.
It’s been quite a few years now, so I could be remembering wrong. I was also among the very first to sign up, so it could also be the issues I had (and complained about) were fixed rather quickly and no one said anything. Either way, definitely seems workable now without being too onerous.
Absolutely.
I also signed up at launch in May 2017, and I can’t remember the app not supporting Keychain.
I’m struggling to remember completely, but I believe it may have not automatically offered to save or generate the password at the time? I got around this by thinking up my own, then going to the Settings app and manually saving a new login under the website address starlingbank.com
I think iOS then recognised it as a password field and, even if it didn’t auto-prompt to fill in the password in the QuickType bar, it gave the option to open Keychain from the password entry field. The top “suggested password” in the list was then always the Starling one I had manually saved. More recently, it now appears in the QuickType bar so it’s even easier. I accept that most people probably wouldn’t have thought of trying this, but the requirement for the password did immediately irritate me so I looked for a solution and decided to try this.
All of this was almost totally seamless with Face ID, as you can imagine, so as has been said above it was reasonably slick and not a massive issue. But I can see why it might possibly have been a pain on Android or even an older iPhone where Touch ID has a bit more friction. It does seem like another example of where the Starling Android experience is a bit of a sub-par experience compared to iOS.
That said, I don’t seem to always be prompted for the a password anyway, only for fairly high value transfers, so I suppose it’s not a huge issue.
This sounds like the experience I remember!
Never even occurred to make my own then add it to keychain after. I think I tried it the other way, getting keychain to randomly generate one, then input it in the starling app. That might have been the issue I was having with the password requirements too. Wish I’d thought of trying it your way, I was really excited for starling back then, but that moment of frustration with the password killed my enthusiasm.
I’ve reached out to support to see if I can re-open my account or open a new one. My phone number is apparently still linked to my closed account so I can’t complete the sign up flow yet.
Good shout!
I only thought of it because I’ve had the same issue before. The automatic Keychain prompt to generate a password is great, but too often it either doesn’t appear or doesn’t respect password requirements.
When that happens I always just get a bit of scrap paper, write out my own password making it deliberately complicated, and manually input into Keychain afterwards.*
I’d never remember my passwords if I had no password manager, so I always put them in Keychain even if I have to do it manually!
*It goes without saying that I rip up this paper later and put it in the fireplace, just to be safe!
I use Bitwarden password manager, so on the rare occasion I have to enter my password, it’s just a click.
The keychain auto fill (that also supports other password managers) is a recent iOS feature. As far as I know there’s nothing special that an app needs to do to support it; any password field will automatically get this feature.
Yes, but there have been various changes and improvements to it over the last few iOS versions.
Originally, it just placed a key at the top of the keyboard in the QuickType bar, and only supported iCloud Keychain, but now it offers full auto-fill and third party support.
I believe you have to describe your password field as such in the app code - if it’s a non-standard password field then iOS won’t identify it necessarily - and I think the feature can also be blocked by code in the app (if the developer chooses to).
Same for me with 1Password, and it works for everything.
In these cases you’re likely to be able to paste your password into the field by going into the Passwords menu so although it’s a few clicks longer, if you can use the random generated keychain passwords, it’s worthwhile!
That’s true - you can paste it in once you have a saved password by going in to the passwords menu - but you are unlikely to be able to use the auto-generate function if the field is being awkward like that.
However, just generate it yourself as I described above, and then manually save it - that way you can, as you say, always then paste it in.
Completely agree - the amount of times I’ve done this is a bit frustrating as I wish people would correctly classify their password fields but it works so I don’t mind!
Do you have iOS? Starling and BitWarden don’t play nicely for me
Starling and Bitwarden work fine for me on iOS 13.6
It works fine but it doesn’t present me the option I have to tap on passwords and manually copy and paste. I’m on iOS 14
Interesting. I’m on iOS 14 as well, but I use iCloud Keychain - however, I haven’t had an occasion where the password has been needed yet, since I’ve installed it (even though I was a day 1 installer).
I’ll report back when I next see it to let you know what happens. Maybe then we can narrow down whether it is an app-specific or iOS system integration issue (and whether it might be caused by something in Starling’s app or a bug in iOS 14).
How do you have Starling saved in your Keychain - I didn’t enter a username it’s a password only entry.