How to Generate a Strong Password (Free, Fast, and Actually Secure)

The single best thing you can do for a new account is to stop inventing the password yourself and let a generator do it. Humans are predictable: we lean on names, dates, keyboard patterns, and the same handful of substitutions. A generator does not. It produces genuinely random characters that cracking software has no shortcut for.

Why a generated password beats one you make up

Password strength comes down to entropy, a measure of unpredictability. A 16-character string of random characters has astronomically more possible combinations than a "clever" password built from a word and a few symbols. Attackers run billions of guesses per second and start with every common pattern, so the only reliable defense is randomness a human did not choose.

The settings that actually matter

When you use a generator, two settings do almost all the work:

• Length. This matters more than anything else. Each extra character multiplies the number of combinations. Aim for at least 16 characters, and go to 20 or more for important accounts.
• Character variety. Include lowercase, uppercase, numbers, and symbols. Variety adds entropy per character, though length is still the bigger lever.

Avoid the temptation to turn off symbols "to make it easier to type." If a generated password is hard to type, that is a sign you should be storing it, not typing it.

Random characters vs a passphrase

There are two good options, and which you pick depends on whether you will type it:

• Random character strings like k7#mQ!2vPx9$Lw4r are ideal for accounts you log into through a password manager that autofills them. You never type them, so length and randomness cost you nothing.
• Passphrases like four to six random unrelated words are better for the one or two passwords you must memorize, such as your device login or master password. They are long, strong, and far easier for a human to recall.

We compare the two in detail in password vs passphrase.

The catch: you cannot remember dozens of them

A generated 16-character password is only useful if you do not have to memorize it. That is the entire reason password managers exist: they generate a unique strong password for every account and fill it in for you, so you remember exactly one master password and nothing else.

This is also where reuse dies. The reason people recycle one password everywhere is that they are trying to remember them. Once a generator and a vault handle that, every account can have its own unique password at no extra mental cost. See how to stop reusing passwords.

A simple workflow

1. When you create an account, open your password manager's generator.
2. Set it to 16+ characters with all character types on.
3. Let it generate and save the password in the same step.
4. Let the manager autofill it from then on.

Passlock does this on a Mac while keeping the generated password in the native macOS Keychain, so it works offline and your vault never touches a server. Generate, store, autofill, forget. That is the whole point: the strongest password is one you never have to think about again.