How It Works

Lomenett has two modes and zero companion software. In Inject mode it plugs in as a USB keyboard and types your login for you, and in Edit mode it appears as a flash drive so you can edit your passwords with the file manager your device already has. This page walks through both modes and everything around them.

Inject mode: finding and typing a login

Lomenett has a battery, so you navigate before you plug in. You pick it up, spin the scroll wheel, and find the account you need. The device holds up to 1,000 credentials and keeps every entry sorted in alphabetical order automatically.

The accelerometer adds a shortcut for long lists. When you hold the device sideways in landscape, the wheel scrolls one entry at a time, and when you turn it upright to portrait, the screen spreads out the alphabet instead. If you are looking for Walmart.com, you turn the device upright, scroll to W, turn it back sideways, and Walmart.com is right there. All of the navigation happens with the wheel, a single button, and a screen that knows which way you are holding it.

When you have the right entry, you plug the device in, put your cursor in the login box, and press the button. Your computer sees a USB keyboard, and Lomenett types the login keystroke by keystroke. Your PIN is entered on the device itself using the wheel, so the computer never sees it.

Usernames are handled however you want them handled. Lomenett can type the username for you before the password, or it can show the username on its screen so you can enter it yourself, or it can leave usernames out entirely and type only the password. You can set one behavior for everything and forget the setting exists, or you can organize it entry by entry however you want.

Because the device presents as a keyboard, it works on anything that accepts one, including your phone, your laptop, a tablet, a desktop computer, a smart TV, a server, and an Xbox 360. If a machine takes keyboard input, Lomenett can log you into it without a driver, an app, or any pairing.

Edit mode: your file manager is the app

Lomenett needs no companion software, because the file manager of whatever you plug it into is the software.

You switch to Edit mode, enter your PIN on the device, and plug it in. Your computer sees an ordinary USB drive, and on that drive is one file with every password you have saved, written in plain lines you can read:

To edit a password, you type the new one in next to the site name. To add an account, you add a line at the end of the file, and to remove one, you delete its line. If you can edit a text file, you can manage your passwords on Lomenett. The device sorts the entries alphabetically on its own, so new lines can go at the bottom in any order.

When you are done, you click eject. The device then encrypts everything and locks it behind its dedicated security silicon. The readable file exists only while you are editing and only after you have entered your PIN, and once ejected, the data is ciphertext protected by a chip that destroys its own key under attack.

Direct CSV import is planned. Every browser and password manager exports a CSV file, and the plan is that you drag that export straight onto the Edit-mode drive and Lomenett imports it. An on-device password generator is planned as well. Neither feature is in the current firmware yet.

The device itself is the synchronization software

Every password manager has to answer the same question, which is how your passwords get to all of your devices. The cloud answer involves an app on each device, an account, and a company syncing everything in the middle. Our answer is that the device itself is the synchronization software. Your passwords live on the stick, and the stick is in your pocket, so they are already on every device you use.

Editing works the same way, because the file manager is the synchronization software. Phones, laptops, tablets, and desktop computers all ship with a file manager that can edit a text file, so all of them can already manage your Lomenett. You can use your passwords on any device and edit them on any device, with nothing to install and nothing to sync.

Dumb by design

Lomenett can only ever appear to a computer as a keyboard or a flash drive, which means it is dumb by design. It has no way to communicate with a computer in any meaningful way beyond doing its job, so it cannot browse, sync, or phone home. That same simplicity is why it works on such a wide range of hardware, from current phones to an Xbox 360. The security consequences of that design are spelled out in our threat model.

The battery

The battery exists so that finding the right login happens in your hand while unplugged, which leaves only a few seconds of work for when the device is plugged in. You will rarely think about charging it, because Lomenett charges every time you use it. Every Inject session and every Edit session happens over USB, and USB provides power, so normal use keeps the battery topped up on its own.

Why it's shaped this way

During development we admitted something uncomfortable, which is that the largest friction of a password device is using a device at all. When you need into an account, you are trying to log in rather than operate a product, and if the tool is slow you will eventually go back to reusing passwords. That is why we ditched the touchscreen, added the battery, added the accelerometer, and kept cutting until getting a password took about five seconds.

Lomenett is for people who reuse passwords even though they know better, for people who are always resetting, and for people who land on a rarely used site and click "forgot password" without trying to remember. We built it to remove the friction that pushes people back into those habits. It costs $90, once, it comes with backups you hold yourself, and the rest is at nulenke.com.