this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
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I think most applications store it in plain text, but makes sure the file is only readable by the current user. This way, we rely on the protection of the OS, instead of doing it ourselves. (I'm not a desktop app developer, so I might be completely wrong, but I think this is what e.g. Firefox does).
Yeah it's not too rare to store passwords in config files (e.g
~/.config/appname/config.json
) usually at least base64 encoded to support special characters. It is usually better to try and store a token instead as they can be revoked or expired. If you have to store a password it might be fun to look into storing it in the system keychain, at least for macos or Linux, not sure if Windows has a keychain.