Quote:
Originally Posted by BritTim
You need a separate password for each device. Part of the idea is that a password for one device cannot be used on another.
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Just to be clear, you don't technically
need to use a separate password for each device, although it's strongly recommended for the reasons
BritTim more or less describes — if you lose one device, you can easily invalidate that specific password without having to change your password everywhere else.
Of course, as Bill points out, FastMail's own native mobile app doesn't use an app password, but uses your primary FastMail password. However, if you lose a device with the FastMail app installed, you can log that connection out from the
Password & Security section of your FastMail settings on the web (just below the same place you would go to create or remove App Passwords).
App Passwords also have the benefit that you can limit them to only work with specific services, so you can have a password that works with your third-party mail app without it also providing access to your calendar, contacts, or files, or you can have a password that only works with SMTP so you can use it in situations where you have an app or service that you only want to use for
sending mail through your FastMail account.
All of that said, however, there's absolutely nothing preventing you from generating a single App Password and using it across all of your devices and apps. You won't be able to go back and look up an App Password once you've created it and moved past the screen where it's displayed, but there's obviously nothing preventing you from writing it down or storing it in something like 1Password and then just re-using it. Again, this isn't recommended as it's less secure, but there's nothing preventing you from doing it.