Hello again! In this part of our Proton Pass tutorial, we’ll cover adding new passwords and editing existing ones across the web extension, Windows app, and mobile app. This is the core of using a password manager—making your online life simpler and more secure.

When developing this course, I wanted to create something accessible and free for everyone, especially those unfamiliar with tech. It’s a labor of love, and I encourage you to share this tutorial with friends and subscribe to the YouTube channel for more security tips.

Now, let’s learn how to add a record in Proton Pass!

Overview

We'll cover:

How to add new entries manually.
How to save passwords dynamically while registering for a new site.
How to edit your passwords, especially when you need to make them more secure.

Let's get started!

Adding Entries in the Proton Pass Web Site

When you first signed up for Proton Pass, you did it through the main Proton Website. Lets go back there and add our first manual entry.

Manually Adding an Entry

Open the Proton Pass Website
Here is the direct link: https://proton.me/pass . Or you can simply search the web for “Proton Pass” and it should give you that page. If it didn’t remember your login from the last time you were on this page, click on the “Sign In” option that appears at the top right of the screen and use the email address and password you used in setting up the account to log in.
Review the login records you have to find one that is missing.
Even if you imported login records from one or two, it’s likely you don’t have all your information in Proton Pass. This is a good time to review any passwords you’ve kept on paper or in a file somewhere that isn’t in your Proton Pass yet. It’s OK if you don’t find anything. It may be a good sign that most of your passwords are now in Proton. If that’s the case, hopefully you watched the video to see how records are added manually.
Add a New Item
At this point you likely only have one vault named “Personal”. But if you have more than one, click on the personal vault so you will be adding the record there. From the Proton Pass web page, look for the Look for the "+" symbol at the top right corner of the screen. Make sure you aren’t using the one at the left side next to the word “Vaults” (used for creating a vault). Click on it to start adding a new record.
Choose the Type of Entry
A menu might appear asking what kind of item you want to add. Since we're adding a password, select "Login".
The "Password" record type would just create a password record that isn’t connected with an email address, username or web URL. Frankly, I haven’t had a use for password records.

Fill in the Details

Now, you'll see a form where you can enter all the details (also shown in the screenshot):

Title: The name by which this login record will be known. Chose a name you likely will use later when searching for this record.
Website URL: Enter the website address. For example, https://www.example.com. This is one of the most important pieces of information to enter if your login is referring to a web page. By entering the URL, it links this login record to that site for easy autofilling.
Username or Email: Type in the username or email you use for that site.
Note that in some cases you will want to record both an email address and a username for the record. For those cases, notice that the icon to the left of the “Email or username” entry has a “+” in it. By clicking on that icon, you will see separate fields for email and for username, allowing you to enter both.
Password: Enter your password. If you don't have one yet or want a strong password, you can use the built-in password generator.
Notes: You can add any extra information here, like security questions or hints.
Save the Entry
After filling in all the details, don't forget to save! Look for a "Save" button, usually at the bottom of the form, and click it.

Dynamically Adding an Entry While Registering for a Site

Sometimes, you might be signing up for a new website and want Proton Pass to save your details on the fly. In this next step we will be registering for a site you haven’t used before. With this, you are going to learn a new trick that has to do with one of the other record types, called the alias, because this is the perfect place to use it. In the previous step we used the Proton Pass website. For this one we’ll use the web browser extension that you installed previously.

Using Cut and Paste
In the video, I showed a couple of areas where the autofill wouldn’t work (typically because it wasn’t set up). In those cases I cut and pasted the email address and password values manually using the shortcuts. These are useful shortcuts to know.
Ctrl-C - Copies the information you have selected, to the clipboard.
Ctrl-V - Pastes the information into the location that is highlighted on the same computer. These shortcuts are for PCs.
On Mobile device, just holding your finger down and dragging over some text will select it. Then hold down for a second until the copy option comes u, then tap on that. When in the Proton Pass app, a quick tap on the email address or the password, saves it to the clipboard. To paste, go to the place you want to paste the copied text into, tap and hold down for a couple of seconds until the paste option appears. Click on that!

Make sure you are logged in through the Extension.
If you installed the web extension and pinned it to your task bar, you’ll see the purple diamond on your web browse to the right of the URL address. If it’s a faded purple diamond, it means the extension has logged out. No problem, just click on it and enter your email address and password just as you did for the web page. But we aren’t going to add the login manually here, we’re going to have Proton do it when we register for the new site.
Go to the Registration Page
Open your browser and navigate to the website where you want to create a new account. For this example, I’m using Yankee Candle. A reputable company, and I’m not concerned about them abusing my data, but I can imagine your hesitance to just sign up for a random site now, so we’re going to see the beauty of the alias record in Proton. With the alias, you won’t be giving them your real email address, and you’ll be able to delete it if at any time you decide you no longer want to get emails from them.
Fill Out the Registration Form
Start filling in the required fields. Many sites like this will only ask for your name and your email address along with a password. I used to use a trick to find out if my data was being spread, of using a fake name when I registered. It may feel weird getting emails addressed to some odd name, but they did the trick. If I started seeing that fake name showing up from other sites. Then I knew they were selling or passing on my data. But there’s a better way now.
When it asks for your email address, don’t give it to them. Instead, click on the “Hide my Email” option. If you haven’t watched the video for this step, I suggest you do that now. It’s easier to show you how it works than to tell you.
In the free version of Proton Pass, you have up to ten email aliases available. Frankly, this is probably the main reason I went with a subscription to Proton, since the paid subscriptions allow unlimited aliases. But there are ways you can manage the aliases to make best use of them. I work with this everyday and it was important enough for me to subscribe. But it absolutely isn’t necessary. There’s a lot you can do with ten aliases if you save them for sites that look like they could misuse your email address. I’m including the alias in this step so you get a better sense of what they are.
Generate a Strong Password
When you get to the password field, click inside it. You should see a small Proton Pass icon appear within the field or nearby. Click on that icon.
- Use the Password Generator: Select the option to generate a password. Proton Pass will create a strong, unique password for you and automatically fill it in.
Complete the Registration
Finish filling out the form and submit it to create your account.
Save the New Login
After you register, Proton Pass will usually detect that you've created a new account. A prompt should appear asking if you want to save this login.
- Click "Save": Confirm that you want to save the login details to your Vault.

Editing Entries in Proton Pass

Updating your passwords in Proton Pass is straightforward. One of the most common times you will need to edit a record is when you need to update the password to improve the security. Your goal should be to have unique encrypted passwords that are generated by Proton for all websites and apps you log in to.

This is a good time to introduce you to the Pass Monitor, a utility in Proton Pass that lets you know when you have vulnerable passwords.

In the last step we used the web extension for Proton Pass. We’ll continue there for now since the web extension is the best place for logging into websites, since it runs in the browser and has access to the web sites directly.

This step of the instructions is the hardest part to document in the written steps. Each website or program is different, and as a result you need to be flexible in how you approach it. The video in this step does the best job of explaining the whole process.

Reviewing Proton Pass Monitor

What we’ll do initially is take a look at the Proton Pass Monitor. That feature, however, is not accessible directly from the web extension. If we click on that option, it directs us to the standalone app for our computer. In my case, I’m using a Windows PC, but it acts the same on Macs. It is also available through the Proton Pass mobile app on your smartphone and tablet.

Open up the stand-alone app on your Windows or Apple computer.

You’ll see an option to monitor the Dark Web, but to enable that you would need a subscription version of Proton Pass. That isn’t really important, because you likely get notices from a bank or credit card company if they’ve seen your information on the Dark Web. The dark web is a place on the internet where hackers exchange information that they got from their hacking intrusions into various websites.

The part you want to look at is the list of weak passwords or Reused passwords (meaning the passwords that you’ve used on multiple sites). There is also a list of Inactive 2FA (for two-factor authentication) where you can tighten your security by implementing two-factor authentication.

You’ll notice on mine I have 144 weak passwords. That’s virtually every one of the login records I have. But the reason for that is that this is a dummy password manager account I’m using just for training. I did build most of these records by importing from a web browser, but those were old listings that have been updated in my real password manager. Still, I make it a practice for times when I’m just sitting around, to go through the Pass Monitor and check for any logins I need to update.

I have not talked about two-factor authentication in this training, because before you can fly a plane, you need to learn how to taxi it on the ground. I want you to focus on securing your passwords before worrying about two-factor authentication. I will add that as an extra part of this training in the near future.

Updating a Password

So let’s pick a login we can update. I’ll use the FocusRite login. It’s a weak login

Open the Entry
From our use of the Pass Monitor, we identified entries with weak passwords in the Pass Monitor.
Open and review the login entry.
After opening and looking at the Locate the account you want to update by scrolling or using the search function.
Update the Web URL
The most common issue that interferes with the ability of a login record to simplify the process of logging in, is a bad or missing web URL address. In the case of the FocusRite login, it not only was missing a web address (URL), but we found when updating it (see the video) that it needed more than one website due to how the web domain changed as we went into the change password option.
Change the password on the site
To change a password, you need to log in with the existing password and go to the account settings option for changing the password. There is no standard affecting all passwords, so it was necessary to do some searching to find the place to change the password on the FocusRite site.
Update the Login record
Update the password field with your new password to match what it was changed to on the site.
Save the Changes
Click "Save" to update the entry.

Editing Entries in the Proton Pass Mobile App

Changing passwords on your mobile device is easy.

Changing a Password

Access the Vault
Open the Proton Pass app and tap on "Vault."
Select the Entry
Find and tap on the account you want to edit.
Edit the Entry
Tap on the "Edit" button, usually found at the top or bottom of the screen.
Update the Password
Enter the new password in the password field.
Save the Changes
Tap on "Save" to update the entry.

Conclusion

And there you have it! By following these steps, you can add new passwords and edit existing ones in Proton Pass, no matter which platform you're using. Keeping your passwords up to date and securely stored helps protect your online accounts.

Next Steps

Try It Out: Practice adding and editing entries to get comfortable with the process.
Explore More Features: Proton Pass also lets you store secure notes and other sensitive information.

Step 4: Adding and Updating Login Records