iOS Passwords app (before it was cool)

#iOS #app #concept #predictingTheFuture

Project background

I developed this app concept in 2023 to show how easy it would be to dramatically improve the user experience on iOS and iPadOS by implementing the password manager functionality as a standalone app. One year later Apple actually implemented something very similar to my idea.

Tools used

Sketch

XCode

Problem

When Apple presented the new features and updates shipping with their new version of iOS at WWDC 2023 one thing that was unfortunately missing from all of the announcements was the introduction of a standalone “Passwords” app. This meant that the saved passwords would continue to be buried within the notoriously complicated Settings app.

This screenshot shows how the passwords functionality was buried in Settings.

I had always been of the opinion that putting this feature front and center as a standalone app would really help the user experience. Not only that, it could also lead to more users discovering the password manager functionality in the first place which would potentially make the personal data and passwords of millions of users around the world safer.

Design Process & Implementation

As the basic idea of the project was to prove how straightforward and easy it could be to design and implement a functional standalone passwords app in iOS the design process for this exercise was kept as simple as possible.

I started by defining the key features that the app had to support. By researching the features of popular password managers like 1Password I ended up with the following short list:

List of passwords with options to view, add, edit or remove entries
Way to search or filter for passwords by either website/app or username/email address
Password sharing feature to share passwords with other people
Way to warn and inform the user of issues with some of their passwords like known password leaks, weak or repeated passwords and so on

Next, I sketched my rough idea for the UI of the app in my notebook. To translate this to a high-fidelity mockup I chose the design tool Sketch as Apple supports it with a great component library for all of their platforms including iOS. In the design I intentionally restricted myself to using only the basic elements provided by SwiftUI on iOS and the rules of Apple's HIG (Human Interface Guidelines) in order to keep the mockup realistic and to illustrate that the goal of a standalone password manager app could be achieved with surprisingly little work.

The mockup of my imagined "Passwords" app.

To finish things up I also designed a little app icon for the imagined standalone app just for fun.

The app icon I designed for this project.

Result Takeaways

This was a very satisfying design exercise. The fact that Apple actually chose to implement a standalone passwords app only a year after I came up with this concept validated my assumptions in the most obvious way possible.

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