There are a raft of tools out there for secure storage of passwords, but they
will all come and go, Vim and GnuPG are forever.
Here’s the config:
augroup encrypted
au!
" First make sure nothing is written to ~/.viminfo while editing
" an encrypted file.
autocmd BufReadPre,FileReadPre *.gpg set viminfo=
" We don't want a swap file, as it writes unencrypted data to disk
autocmd BufReadPre,FileReadPre *.gpg set noswapfile
" Switch to binary mode to read the encrypted file
autocmd BufReadPre,FileReadPre *.gpg set bin
autocmd BufReadPre,FileReadPre *.gpg let ch_save = &ch|set ch=2
autocmd BufReadPost,FileReadPost *.gpg '[,']!gpg --decrypt 2> /dev/null
" Switch to normal mode for editing
autocmd BufReadPost,FileReadPost *.gpg set nobin
autocmd BufReadPost,FileReadPost *.gpg let &ch = ch_save|unlet ch_save
autocmd BufReadPost,FileReadPost *.gpg execute ":doautocmd BufReadPost " . expand("%:r")
" Convert all text to encrypted text before writing
autocmd BufWritePre,FileWritePre *.gpg '[,']!gpg --default-recipient-self -ae 2>/dev/null
" Undo the encryption so we are back in the normal text, directly
" after the file has been written.
autocmd BufWritePost,FileWritePost *.gpg u
" Fold entries by default
autocmd BufReadPre,FileReadPre *.gpg set foldmethod=expr
autocmd BufReadPre,FileReadPre *.gpg set foldexpr=getline(v:lnum)=~'^\\s*$'&&getline(v:lnum+1)=~'\\S'?'<1':1
augroup END
Now, open a file, say super_secret_passwords.gpg and enter your passwords
with a blank line between each set:
My Twitter account
malc : s3cr3t
My Facebook account
malc : s3cr3t
My LinkedIn account
malc : s3cr3t
When you write the file out, it will be encrypted with your GPG key. When
you next open it, you’ll be prompted for your GPG private key passphrase to
decrypt the file.
The line folding config will mean all the passwords will be hidden by default
when you open the file, you can reveal the details using zo (or right arrow /
l) with the cursor over the password title.
I like this system because as long as I have gpg and my private key available,
I can extract any long lost password from my collection.