Masking user input in python with asterisks

Disclaimer: does not provide the asterix in terminal, but it does so in jupyter notebook.

The below code provides replaces written characters with asterix and allow for deletion of wrongly typed characters. The number of asterixes reflects the number of typed characters.

import getpass
key = getpass.getpass('Password :: ')

And after the user press enter:

To solve this I wrote this small module pyssword to mask the user input password at the prompt. It works with windows. The code is below:

from msvcrt import getch
import getpass, sys

def pyssword(prompt='Password: '):
    '''
        Prompt for a password and masks the input.
        Returns:
            the value entered by the user.
    '''

    if sys.stdin is not sys.__stdin__:
        pwd = getpass.getpass(prompt)
        return pwd
    else:
        pwd = ""        
        sys.stdout.write(prompt)
        sys.stdout.flush()        
        while True:
            key = ord(getch())
            if key == 13: #Return Key
                sys.stdout.write('\n')
                return pwd
                break
            if key == 8: #Backspace key
                if len(pwd) > 0:
                    # Erases previous character.
                    sys.stdout.write('\b' + ' ' + '\b')                
                    sys.stdout.flush()
                    pwd = pwd[:-1]                    
            else:
                # Masks user input.
                char = chr(key)
                sys.stdout.write('*')
                sys.stdout.flush()                
                pwd = pwd + char

If you want a solution that works on Windows/macOS/Linux and on Python 2 & 3, you can install the pwinput module:

pip install pwinput

Unlike getpass.getpass() (which is in the Python Standard Library), the pwinput module can display *** mask characters as you type.

Example usage:

>>> pwinput.pwinput()
Password: *********
'swordfish'
>>> pwinput.pwinput(mask='X') # Change the mask character.
Password: XXXXXXXXX
'swordfish'
>>> pwinput.pwinput(prompt='PW: ', mask='*') # Change the prompt.
PW: *********
'swordfish'
>>> pwinput.pwinput(mask='') # Don't display anything.
Password:
'swordfish'

Unfortunately this module, like Python's built-in getpass module, doesn't work in IDLE or Jupyter Notebook.

More details at https://pypi.org/project/pwinput/

Note that pwinput is the new name for the stdiomask module.