Summary
Kee Vault users should read at least this summary. If you use only KeePass/KeePassRPC you can skip this topic and await more details about KeePassRPC version 2 in an upcoming topic.
You should notice no differences or problems but we recommend installing updates to Kee Vault as soon as possible over the next couple of months.
The main points to be aware of are:
- From today for the next 2-4 weeks, ensure you upgrade (refresh the page and/or press the upgrade button at the top of the page) the Kee Vault version 1 web app - https://keevault.pm - if you can’t do this on every device and web browser on which you have used Kee Vault 1, at least make sure you do so before next unlocking your vault on that device/browser.
- In approximately 2-4 weeks, ensure you install updates to Kee Vault version 2 (Android and iOS) as soon as possible. If you use Kee Vault 2 on multiple devices, we recommend checking that all have been updated at the same time, so you may want to delay some updates by a few hours/days until your other devices are ready. We will post an update to this topic when the new versions are being rolled out but the exact timing will be dictated by Google and Apple.
The upgraded version number for the web app is 1.1.0 (find this in the “Kee Vault Account” > “Support information” part of the app).
We’re also taking this opportunity to increase the technical version number of the Kee Vault app on Android and iOS from 1.2.0 to 2.3.0. We think the new version number is clearer now that we regularly refer to those mobile apps as “Kee Vault 2”.
We are aiming to release the updated version of Kee Vault 2 to beta testers in around 2 weeks and all other users in around 4 weeks but can’t guarantee those timescales at this point.
Details
Kee Vault and the Kee desktop browser extension ultimately rely upon the KeePass database format KDBX.
KeePass determines which version of the KDBX format it uses to save passwords. Many other password managers also import or export in KDBX format, although support for different versions of that format can vary significantly - not all will support the newest version of KDBX.
Until now, Kee Vault 1 and 2 have both supported importing KDBX version 3.x and version 4.0, and exporting KDBX version 4.0.
To enable future improvements to Kee Vault and the Kee desktop browser extension, we will soon roll out new versions of our software that will also understand the newer KDBX version 4.1.
If you install updates in the order that we release them you should notice no changes, if not, you may come across minor annoyances relating to settings or some custom field data appearing to roll back to an earlier configuration. Nothing should be lost beyond retrieval, although you may have to look through your entry history to recover some recently made changes.
Exports from Kee Vault will default to version 4.1 of KDBX. These changes improve compatibility with KeePass but other password managers may need to be updated to understand this new format.
Alongside the KDBX version upgrade, we are also upgrading the internal entry data storage format and location (the “KPRPC JSON” that KeePassRPC users may have come across). This huge but very technical change is a big step towards enabling the development of many new improvements and features in future but we are proceeding cautiously since this is the first significant change to this part of the Kee Vault software for over a decade.
One of the changes means that we now require every field in an entry to be uniquely identifiable. So, especially for imported entries, you’ll sometimes see long unique identifiers as the name of your field - you can just rename them if you want.
We have carefully designed these compatibility changes to make them as invisible as possible, even for users who don’t upgrade everything in the order we intend (thanks for reading this - we fear not everybody will!). We are somewhat limited by the need to retain compatibility with KeePass/KeePassRPC and are forced into a rapid rollout of these changes by Google’s pending removal of the current version of the Kee browser extension from Chrome in June.
Please let us know if you come across any problems relating to this change and we will help if possible (but also look in your Entry history first for a potentially faster resolution).