getpass — Secure Password Prompt

Purpose:Prompt the user for a value, usually a password, without echoing what they type to the console.

Many programs that interact with the user via the terminal need to ask the user for password values without showing what the user types on the screen. The getpass module provides a portable way to handle such password prompts securely.

Example

The getpass() function prints a prompt, then reads input from the user until they press return. The input is returned as a string to the caller.

getpass_defaults.py
import getpass

try:
    p = getpass.getpass()
except Exception as err:
    print('ERROR:', err)
else:
    print('You entered:', p)

The default prompt, if none is specified by the caller, is “Password:”.

$ python3 getpass_defaults.py

Password:
You entered: sekret

The prompt can be changed to any value needed.

getpass_prompt.py
import getpass

p = getpass.getpass(prompt='What is your favorite color? ')
if p.lower() == 'blue':
    print('Right.  Off you go.')
else:
    print('Auuuuugh!')

Some programs ask for a pass phrase instead of a simple password, to give better security.

$ python3 getpass_prompt.py

What is your favorite color?
Right.  Off you go.

$ python3 getpass_prompt.py

What is your favorite color?
Auuuuugh!

By default, getpass() uses sys.stdout to print the prompt string. For a program that may produce useful output on sys.stdout, it is frequently better to send the prompt to another stream such as sys.stderr.

getpass_stream.py
import getpass
import sys

p = getpass.getpass(stream=sys.stderr)
print('You entered:', p)

Using sys.stderr for the prompt means standard output can be redirected (to a pipe or file) without seeing the password prompt. The value entered by the user is still not echoed back to the screen.

$ python3 getpass_stream.py >/dev/null

Password:

Using getpass Without a Terminal

Under Unix, getpass() always requires a tty it can control via termios, so input echoing can be disabled. This means values will not be read from a non-terminal stream redirected to standard input. Instead, getpass tries to get to the tty for a process, and no error is raised if they can access it.

$ echo "not sekret" | python3 getpass_defaults.py

Password:
You entered: sekret

It is up to the caller to detect when the input stream is not a tty, and use an alternate method for reading in that case.

getpass_noterminal.py
import getpass
import sys

if sys.stdin.isatty():
    p = getpass.getpass('Using getpass: ')
else:
    print('Using readline')
    p = sys.stdin.readline().rstrip()

print('Read: ', p)

With a tty:

$ python3 ./getpass_noterminal.py

Using getpass:
Read:  sekret

Without a tty:

$ echo "sekret" | python3 ./getpass_noterminal.py

Using readline
Read:  sekret

See also