GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 704674
Modal password dialogs makes it hard to use safe passwords
Last modified: 2013-07-24 09:13:58 UTC
Some password dialogs under gnome shell can not be minimized. For example the online account dialogs and wifi password dialogs. This makes it impossible to copy and paste generated passwords. Extra tricky use case: Enable two step authentication in Google and generate an application specific password for an existing online account (https://security.google.com/settings/security). The generated password is a long random string that's probably impossible to remember for most people. When the online account password dialog appears, you can't minimize it to copy and paste the password.
In general I think that system modal dialogs make a lot of sense for password entry. This type of dialog makes it clear that the system is saving the password and increases the sense of trust. Modality is also good because it makes it clear that you need to enter the password before proceeding with what you were trying to do. I understand that using modal dialogs in this way is awkward when using external tools to either save or generate passwords, but I'm honestly not sure what the best solution is there. It is possible to dismiss the dialog, generate the password, copy it and then trigger the password dialog again. Not pretty, I know, but it can be made to work and the design is good for other reasons,
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 688434 ***