v1.19.0 #2154

The next release of KeeWeb is currently underway. It has been awhile, but we've recently added a few new developers to the team which have worked toward re-organizing KeeWeb, and getting a game-plan in place.

Currently, there are a lot of feature requests, as well as major bugs, and internal plans that we want to complete so that we can progress KeeWeb to the next step, but for now, since a release was so far back, we've worked on at least getting some important bugs addressed, updating packages, and even a few new features. However, the first few weeks have involved reading through all of the code to get a feel for how it is structured. As we read through more and more, development speeds should significantly progress. So please bare with us.

Bugs

Issues that have been reported within KeeWeb:

• The password field should now render spaces correctly when revealing your password.
• Users who initially set a key-file on your vault should now be able to unset the keyfile at any time
• Addressed an issue with people attempting to build their own copy of KeeWeb having tests not complete properly
• Fixed error error:0308010C:digital envelope routines::unsupported with legacy support

(more are currently being worked on, they'll be added here once officially completed)

Dependencies

KeeWeb is very outdated on a lot of the dependencies; we're currently working to bring some of them up to more recent versions, including Electron. A list will be posted here once implementation is successful.

To see the current status of the dependency updates, please view:

• Dev - Dependencies #2160

Features

Modified or added functionality for this upcoming release:

otpauth URLs

We've added the ability for KeeWeb to accept two types of otpauth URLs:

• otpauth://totp?secret=
• otpauth://totp/default?secret=

Both of the above formats should render the same OTP code after you have pressed enter to submit your URL.

Password Generation

We have given the password generation interface an overhaul, with the following changes / additions:

• Added the ability to generate passphrases of varying lengths, as well as controlling the case, adding numbers, and separators

  • Selecting ABC by itself will output WORD1 WORD2
  • Selecting abc by itself will output word1 word2
  • Selecting ABC + abc will output Word1 Word2

• Added 512-bit (128 length) generation

  • Hashes can now be transformed between lowercase and UPPERCASE.

• Added UUID v4 preset

  • e,g: 39578afb-b51b-4c1b-bfdb-b629fa9589cd

• Added a new spaces parameter for randomly placing spaces in passwords and passphrases

• Enhanced the interface so that text is easier to read and not super tiny

Update (4-18-24)

We're still working on dependencies. At the moment, we're dealing with Electron; which has had a large number of updates. About 70% of the overall dependencies have been bumped up to the latest versions, or pretty close to the most recent versions. A lot of the methods used in existing KeeWeb code are deprecated, and need to be migrated over. As we upgrade to newer versions, more and more code will break, so we're having to do this slowly.

We are adding a few new features here and there as I go through the code, but most of the other additions are just "quality of life", such as the ability to bind the dev tools to a hotkey for the desktop version, instead of having to chase down the dev tools button on the Advanced Settings panel. Right now we're putting in about 12 - 15 hours a day. So rest assured, despite the lack of repo pushes; we're working on everything in the background. We don't want to push to the official repo until we have operational code.

Update (4-23-24)

Work progresses. However, we're updating the community on what we're doing.

If you haven't noticed, a new pull request has been created. It has however, not been merged yet while some things are completed.

• v1.19 Updates #2168

One of the features being worked on right now is expanding what KeeWeb can do for the user. We already had the ability to render markdown in the note field. However, the program cannot render attachments unless it's a regular text file.

We've now added the ability to display markdown for any attachment that starts with .md, however, there's a few things to remember.

This feature is not intended to be a full markdown viewer. If you are looking to view markdown files properly; use a program such as Obsidian.md.

KeeWeb will NOT display any in-line styles you have inside your markdown. And I'm sure the question will be "Why Not?". That answer comes down to security. Giving the user the ability to execute in-line scripts would be a horrible idea for a password manager, because it would open you up to injections. Even if KeeWeb is hosted locally; it still opens a hole that I'm not entertaining.

Here is a good article explaining the issue. Also as the article mentions, you could use a nonce or hash, but I feel that KeeWeb has far more important issues that need addressed right now, and I don't want to place so much time into a feature until the app is back in a comfortable position. This was a quick add, just to give the community something new.

As an example, if your markdown file contains the following code:

<img src="myFile.png" style="width:50%; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;">

Your file will render this code as:

<img src="myFile.png" style="">

You can however, use regular HTML tags:

<div align="center">
    <img src="myFile.png" width="50%">
</div>

So when you have a .md file you wish to view in KeeWeb, don't expect to see anything you've added in-line, such as customized css styles. This feature was added so that you can briefly view markdown files you've added within your vault. If you need more features or flexibility; use another program for markdown specifically.

Why Markdown?: It's a highly popular format now for structuring information. And with some of my credentials, I need to provide more than just a secret. I need a brief reminder of setting something up which I've heard others do as well. So this allows you to keep the information in the same place as the credentials for tasks you may leave for six months and then come back to a refresher with a simple glance at a file.

This feature will support all of the known markdown syntax, such as:

• Ordered, unordered lists
• Tables
• Images
• Italic, bold, strike-through, subscript, superscript emphasis
• Codeblocks (without syntax highlighting. Maybe this can be added later)
• Headers H1 - H6
• Links
• Horizontal ruler
• Abbreviations (abbr)
• Blockquotes

Along with this new feature; we are still working on bug fixes, and other house-keeping issues that need to be addressed. We're trying to create a good line-up of things for KeeWeb since it has been so long.

Update (4-29-24)

Some users have reported an outage on our KeeWeb icon fetcher service at https://services.keeweb.info.

The service had been originally suspended due to abuse. However, we've recently migrated over to a new Cloudflare worker which will be handling this service going forward.

We are currently working on updating the DNS to route to this new cloudflare worker, and the service should be operational again shortly, in time for v1.19. After we are finished, downloading favicons should work for current versions of KeeWeb being used.

Update (4-30-24)

The KeeWeb Favicon Grabber service is back online. Existing versions of KeeWeb should work without issue.

The URL is the same as the original, with an example such as:

• https://services.keeweb.info/favicon/reddit.com

It attempts several different ways of getting an icon from a website, however, few sites may not have one, or the favicon may be bad (too dark, etc). In these instances, we've created a favicon CDN Github repo which will store a few favicons that will override the defaults. That repo is available at: https://github.com/keeweb/favicon-cdn

We welcome contributions if you find a website that either doesn't have a proper favicon, or the favicon doesn't look good in KeeWeb. If you would like to submit override icons, please follow the guidelines listed in that repo's README.md. If you submit an icon that is not properly formatted; it will be rejected.

The final note is in regards to abuse. Please be mindful when using the favicon service that too much traffic can cause issues for others. There are limits in place if you start fetching too many icons within a very short period of time. If we detect that you are purposely abusing the system, you will be blocked. The limits are generous, and as long as you're not trying to fetch dozens of icons a second; you should be fine.

Update (5-12-24)

Been a few weeks since an update, so we'll throw one out there.

At present, most of the major changes to KeeWeb v1.19 are finished. The remaining tasks for this update will now focus on:

• 3rd party service integration (Google, Microsoft, etc)
• A few reported bugs that are left to be investigated which seem to be more on the serious side and disallow certain features from functioning properly (issues that came from the long delay after v1.18).
• A set duration to test out everything that has been changed in v1.19 and ensure that it is stable. There were a lot of deprecated methods which were changed, and while most of them were tested; there's a few instances where a feature behaved slightly different. Those are being patched as they are found.

What I may end up doing is releasing a beta build, so that anyone who wishes to stay on the stable version for now can do so, and anyone who wishes to test can migrate over. There are a series of changes between both the web and OS builds, so simply releasing on https://beta.keeweb.info won't allow for the other changes to be tested to ensure stability.

But please keep in mind; there is still a laundry list of things to do, which simply aren't going to make it into v1.19. Some users who have reported an issue, may not see it fixed just yet. We still have large tasks to do such as migrating Electron; which is toward the top of the list right now. This also includes browser integration.