I mount my pass dir with encfs. Mount when I need access to passwords, and no need to remember to close it before I shut down (or if the machine randomly crashes).
I can store the encfs encrypted tree on cloud storage (spideroak in my case) and have it synched across machines. Works pretty well.
That seems like saying why use an encrypting password manager at all if you're using full disk encryption, isn't it okay to just keep your passwords in plaintext on your encrypted disk?
Encryption only protects files at rest. The vast majority of attacks are against live systems connected to a network, where full disk encryption won't help you one bit. It is a nice extra layer of protection for when a device is lost/stolen, but I don't consider it a primary form of protection for any important data.
Check out pw, my alternative to pass, designed because of the reason you mentioned: I don't want my password manager to leak the list of services I use.
In pw each password database is a single file, the internal indexes are random IDs. Each line in a database is a serialized GPG file with a password and associated metadata.
The file format is git-compatible and everything can be managed with standard command line tools.
It's not. When you decrypt one file you have all of your passwords in-memory (terminal, clipboard, browser extension, qtpass). When you do that for one login/password pair you only expose that pair, not all of the others.
When you decrypt, you have the key in memory in either case. Assuming you don't put all the password into an untrustworthy output (terminal, clipboard, etc), what's the difference ?
It's convenient yes, but I prefer one encrypted file that contains it all.