PasswordStrength

A password field with a live strength meter and a rule checklist underneath it, built on top of TextEntry. One control on both hosts, with the same properties and the same defaults.

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Frameworks

.NET MAUI

Blazor

The defaults are passphrase-first

MinimumLength is 15, breached values are refused, and every character-composition rule — uppercase, lowercase, number, symbol — is off.

That is deliberate. A “must contain a symbol” rule does not produce strong passwords; it produces Passw0rd!, which is short, memorable to nobody, and already sitting at the top of every wordlist. NIST SP 800-63B dropped composition rules for exactly that reason. Turn them on when an external policy forces your hand, not as a precaution.

Basic Usage

MAUI

<shiny:PasswordStrength Placeholder="Passphrase"
                        Variant="Floating"
                        Password="{Binding Passphrase, Mode=TwoWay}"
                        IsAcceptable="{Binding CanSubmit}"
                        StrengthChanged="OnStrengthChanged" />

<Button Text="Create account"
        Command="{Binding SubmitCommand}"
        IsEnabled="{Binding CanSubmit}" />

Blazor

<PasswordStrength @ref="field"
                  @bind-Password="passphrase"
                  Placeholder="Passphrase"
                  StrengthChanged="OnStrengthChanged" />

<button disabled="@(field?.IsAcceptable != true)">Create account</button>

@code {
    PasswordStrength? field;
    string passphrase = "";

    void OnStrengthChanged(PasswordStrengthChangedEventArgs e) { }
}

Gate on IsAcceptable, not on Score

The two answer different questions and they genuinely disagree.

• Score (0-100) and Level (Weak/Fair/Good/Strong) say how hard the password is to crack.
• IsAcceptable says whether every rule in the policy is met.

A forty-character passphrase scores 100 and still fails a policy that demands a digit. A submit button bound to Score >= 80 will happily accept a password your own rules reject.

Properties

Property	Type	Default	Description
Password	string	""	Current value (TwoWay / @bind-Password)
Placeholder	string	"Password"	Placeholder / floating label
Variant	TextEntryVariant	Classic	Passed through to the inner TextEntry
MinimumLength	int	15	Shortest acceptable password
RequireUppercase	bool	false	Require an A-Z
RequireLowercase	bool	false	Require an a-z
RequireNumber	bool	false	Require a digit
RequireSpecialCharacter	bool	false	Require a character from SpecialCharacters
SpecialCharacters	string	printable ASCII symbols + space	What counts as special
RequireNotCompromisedPassword	bool	true	Refuse commonly breached values and their disguises
BlockedPasswords	list	null	Extra values to refuse outright
UserInputs	list	null	This user’s email / name — refused, and discounted when scoring
Evaluator	IPasswordStrengthEvaluator?	null	Per-field scorer override
DebounceMilliseconds	int	250	Pause before scoring; 0 scores every keystroke
Localizer	PasswordStrengthLocalizer?	null	Replaces the wording
MeterStyle	PasswordStrengthMeterStyle	Segments	Four blocks, or one bar filled to the score
MeterHeight	double	6	Meter thickness
MeterCornerRadius	double / string	3 / "3px"	Meter corner radius
SegmentSpacing	double	4	Gap between segments; ignored in Bar mode
TrackColor	Color? / string?	null	Unfilled meter; null follows surface-container-highest
WeakColor FairColor GoodColor StrongColor	Color? / string?	null	Null follows critical / caution / warning / success
RuleTextColor	Color? / string?	null	Unsatisfied checklist row; null follows on-surface-variant
RuleFontSize	double	13	Checklist font size
ShowMeter	bool	true	Draw the meter
ShowStrengthLabel	bool	true	Draw the Weak/Fair/Good/Strong caption
ShowRules	bool	true	Draw the checklist
ShowWarning	bool	true	Surface the evaluator’s warning as the field’s hint text
ShowVisibilityToggle	bool	true	The Show/Hide button
ShowPasswordIcon HidePasswordIcon	ImageSource? / string?	null	Toggle content; null uses the words “Show” / “Hide”
Score	int	0	0-100, read-only
Level	PasswordStrengthLevel	None	Read-only
IsAcceptable	bool	false	Every rule met, read-only
Result	PasswordStrengthResult?	null	Full verdict — rules, warning, suggestions

On MAUI Score, Level, IsAcceptable and Result default to BindingMode.OneWayToSource, so bind them to view-model properties. On Blazor they are plain read-only properties reached through @ref.

Events & Methods

Member	Description
StrengthChanged	PasswordStrengthChangedEventArgs — Result, Score, Level, IsAcceptable
Completed	Return key pressed
StrengthChangedCommand	MAUI only; invoked with the PasswordStrengthResult
EvaluateNowAsync()	Score immediately, bypassing the debounce
IsPasswordRevealed / SetPasswordRevealed(bool)	Drive the reveal from your own UI
Focus() / Unfocus()	MAUI only

Blocked words and the user’s own details

<shiny:PasswordStrength Password="{Binding Password}"
                        MinimumLength="12"
                        BlockedPasswords="{Binding HouseRules}"
                        UserInputs="{Binding UserDetails}" />

BlockedPasswords refuses exact matches, case-insensitively — the product name, the company name, whatever a policy endpoint hands you. UserInputs is different: an email address is split on its punctuation first, so ada.lovelace@example.com catches a password containing lovelace, and the matched run is discounted when scoring rather than merely flagged. Fragments shorter than four characters are ignored — they match half the dictionary and would fail every password.

Both lists are read when the parameters change. If you mutate a list in place, call EvaluateNowAsync().

Pluggable scoring

public interface IPasswordStrengthEvaluator
{
    ValueTask<PasswordStrengthResult> EvaluateAsync(
        PasswordStrengthRequest request,
        CancellationToken cancellationToken = default
    );
}

Register one app-wide:

// MAUI
builder.UseShinyControls(x => x.SetCustomPasswordStrengthEvaluator<HibpEvaluator>());

// Blazor
services.AddShinyControls(x => x.SetCustomPasswordStrengthEvaluator<HibpEvaluator>());

Resolution order is Evaluator → DI → the built-in heuristic.

The interface is asynchronous and cancellable precisely so a network-backed implementation is workable. Keystrokes are debounced by DebounceMilliseconds and the previous evaluation is cancelled before the next starts, so an evaluator is not asked to answer for every character typed — but it must pass the token through, because the answer to a password the user has already changed is worthless. If a custom evaluator throws, the built-in one answers instead, so losing the network downgrades the meter rather than freezing it on a stale verdict.

Never send the password anywhere

The reason Have I Been Pwned’s range API takes the first five characters of the SHA-1 hash and returns a bucket of suffixes is so the password — and its full hash — never leaves the device. An implementation that POSTs the plaintext to check it has turned a strength meter into a credential exfiltrator.

The built-in heuristic

DefaultPasswordStrengthEvaluator estimates entropy as collapsed length × log2(character pool), then maps it onto 0-100 where 80 bits scores 100. “Collapsed” means the characters an attacker gets for free come out first:

• runs of the same character — aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa is worth about two characters, not sixteen
• ascending and descending sequences — 123456, abcdef
• repeated blocks — everything past the first repetition of abcabcabc

Any word from the built-in list of commonly breached passwords is then charged a flat 11 bits instead of its length, and a password that is one of those values — seen through case, leet substitution and a bolted-on year, so P@ssw0rd2024 is caught along with password — is scored as if it were the bare word.

It needs no network and no data files. The list is deliberately short rather than a bundled ten-million-line wordlist: a package every app links has no business carrying tens of megabytes, and the long tail is better served by a real breach corpus behind the interface above. CommonPasswords.IsCompromised(string) and CommonPasswords.FindLongestMatch(string) are public, so a custom evaluator can reuse the list.

Localization

control.Localizer = text => text.Key switch
{
    PasswordStrengthTextKey.LevelWeak => "Faible",
    PasswordStrengthTextKey.LevelStrong => "Fort",
    // Argument carries the number, so the sentence can be rebuilt rather than patched
    PasswordStrengthTextKey.RuleMinimumLength => $"Au moins {text.Argument} caractères",
    _ => null // anything not translated keeps the default
};

Every string the control paints has a key. Returning null keeps the default, so a localizer only has to know about the strings it actually translates.

Accessibility

On Blazor the meter is a role="progressbar" carrying aria-valuenow and an aria-valuetext of the current level, the strength caption is aria-live="polite", and each checklist row appends a visually hidden “, met” / “, not met” — a coloured glyph on its own does not say which.

The Show/Hide toggle defaults to the words “Show” and “Hide” rather than an eye glyph. An eye emoji renders at a different size on every platform, some Android system fonts do not have one, and neither reads correctly to a screen reader. Set ShowPasswordIcon / HidePasswordIcon to use your own icon font.

Claude CodeGitHub Copilot

Step 1 — Add the marketplace:

claude plugin marketplace add shinyorg/skills

Step 2 — Install the plugin:

claude plugin install shiny@shiny

One plugin installs all 35 Shiny skills. Your agent loads only the skill relevant to what you're building, so there's no cost to having them all available.

Step 1 — Add the marketplace:

copilot plugin marketplace add https://github.com/shinyorg/skills

Step 2 — Install the plugin:

copilot plugin install shiny@shiny

One plugin installs all 35 Shiny skills. Your agent loads only the skill relevant to what you're building, so there's no cost to having them all available.

View shiny-controls Skill