The Passwords app doesn’t look like getting too many seen modifications on this yr’s iOS 26 and macOS Tahoe releases (aside from the Liquid Glass therapy, after all). Nonetheless, it’s gaining one important new functionality beneath the hood: the flexibility to seamlessly transfer passkeys to and from different platforms.
Over the previous few years, Passkeys have develop into a easy and safe various to conventional passwords. Many web sites, together with Apple’s iCloud and mainstream companies like Gmail, have already adopted passkeys, eliminating the necessity to fuss with passwords and even usernames in some circumstances.
Sadly, essentially the most vital benefit of passkeys can be their best weak spot. These credentials are saved securely in password managers, usually accessible solely utilizing biometric authentication like Face ID or Contact ID; nonetheless, the usual additionally prevents passkeys from being exported within the conventional method, since a text-based file containing your passkeys would threat compromising their safety.
That creates no small quantity of lock-in amongst password managers, and a few even imagine that is by design. Whether or not you select to make use of Apple’s new Passwords app or a third-party password supervisor like 1Password, your passkeys find yourself caught in no matter app you used to create them.
Though this lack of portability to your passkeys isn’t severe since most companies allow you to generate a number of passkeys for various gadgets and password managers, it’s nonetheless removed from ultimate. A consumer who has all their passkeys saved in 1Password and desires to modify to Apple Passwords would want to go to every web site manually and manually generate a brand new passkey utilizing Apple’s app. That’s not solely time-consuming, however it additionally dangers leaving a number of behind when you’re not cautious.
The difficulty is extra advanced than the cynical take that software program firms are attempting to lock their customers into their password managers. Passkeys are an ordinary developed by the FIDO Alliance, which didn’t present a means for exchanging passkeys between platforms till final yr. In October, the FIDO Alliance lastly revealed a draft spec for this, opening up a safe technique to transfer passkeys between platforms utilizing a completely encrypted format that doesn’t threat exposing your passkeys within the course of.
Whereas firms like 1Password and Dashlane dedicated to adopting the spec, Apple could also be getting there first. Throughout a WWDC25 developer presentation on What’s new in passkeys, Apple engineer Andrew Abosh revealed how the Passwords app will permit customers to import and export passkeys securely.
Folks personal their credentials and will have the flexibleness to handle them the place they select. That’s why I’m glad to let you already know, passkeys can now be transferred securely between collaborating credential supervisor apps on iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and visionOS 26. This provides individuals extra management over their information and the selection of which credential supervisor they use.
Andrew Abosh, Authentication Expertise Engineer
Abosh defined how the method is “basically totally different” from conventional credential export strategies. It’s not only a matter of dumping passkeys to an unencrypted CSV or JSON file that may be manually imported into one other app. As a substitute, the switch course of happens immediately between collaborating credential supervisor apps and may solely be executed after the consumer explicitly authorizes it utilizing Face ID.
“No insecure recordsdata are created on disk, eliminating the danger of credential leaks from exported recordsdata,” Abosh mentioned, including, “It’s a contemporary, safe technique to transfer credentials.” Apps and web sites that use passkeys additionally don’t have to take part within the course of, as the total passkeys are transferred to the brand new password supervisor, identical to a password can be, solely way more securely.
The brand new passkey export options are already up and operating within the preliminary iOS 26, iPadOS 26, and macOS Tahoe developer betas. Nonetheless, your passkeys have nowhere to go but since that is an app-to-app switch course of. Initiating the export on an iPhone or iPad prompts you to “Set up one other app to obtain your information,” whereas macOS Tahoe enables you to begin the method after which prompts you to “Choose a Vacation spot” from a clean record.
Nonetheless, it’s nice to see Apple getting forward of this with a form of “if-you-build-it-they-will-come” strategy. As Abosh notes, this makes use of the FIDO Alliance customary, and others like 1Password which have already dedicated to supporting this now have an on-ramp into Apple Passwords. Hopefully, we’ll have some apps able to go onto this record as soon as Apple publicly releases its working system updates this fall.