“App Fill” (A functionality that allows trusted external apps to fill in username and password details into apps, outside of a browser) has been standard for some time on Android devices, and LastPass has been able to fill in details for apps related to services you use, such as Netflix or Facebook. Apple’s Keychain used to be the only option for auto-filling passwords outside of Chrome or Safari on an iOS device, but since the release of iOS 12, users have had the option to use LastPass as their default auto-fill instead of Keychain. No need to copy and paste any more!
As well as providing feature-rich browser extensions for Windows, MacOS and Linux, LastPass is available as a standalone application for both Windows and MacOS.
Available as an app from the Microsoft Store for Windows, and from the Mac App Store on MacOS, LastPass brings many of the features of the Android and iOS apps to your desktop. Like any other app, it can run in the background and you can fetch or store information as needed – but it still maintains the same level of security you’d expect from all the other LastPass apps, decrypting information only as necessary, and directly on your local machine rather than online.
Windows users who use the Chrome extension can also install a special “full version” that includes a binary component – a special component that provides extra features by installing itself directly on your computer, and provides benefits such as faster encryption and decryption, auto logout when idle, adding attachments to secure notes, and use of Windows Fingerprint or smart card logins, and several other features.
Linux users needn’t feel left out; while there’s no stand-alone desktop application for the Linux platform, there are still browser extensions available!
Next time, we’ll be taking a look at some of the features specific to LastPass for Teams and Enterprise.
