Apple OSes will soon transfer passkeys seamlessly and securely across platforms.

Apple this week provided a glimpse into a feature that solves one of the biggest drawbacks of passkeys, the industry-wide standard for website and app authentication that isn't susceptible to credential phishing and other attacks targeting passwords.

The import/export feature, which Apple demonstrated at this week’s Worldwide Developers Conference, will be available in the next major releases of iOS, macOS, iPadOS, and visionOS. It aims to solve one of the biggest shortcomings of passkeys as they have existed to date. Passkeys created on one operating system or credential manager are largely bound to those environments. A passkey created on a Mac, for instance, can sync easily enough with other Apple devices connected to the same iCloud account. Transferring them to a Windows device or even a dedicated credential manager installed on the same Apple device has been impossible.

Growing pains
That limitation has led to criticisms that passkeys are a power play by large companies to lock users into specific product ecosystems. Users have also rightly worried that the lack of transferability increases the risk of getting locked out of important accounts if a device storing passkeys is lost, stolen, or destroyed.

The FIDO Alliance, the consortium of more than 100 platform providers, app makers, and websites developing the authentication standard, has been keenly aware of the drawback and has been working on programming interfaces that will make the passkey syncing more flexible. A recent teardown of the Google password manager by Android Authority shows that developers are actively implementing import/export tools, although the company has yet to provide any timeline for their general availability. (Earlier this year, the Google password manager added functionality to transfer passwords to iOS apps, but the process is clunky.) A recent update from FIDO shows that a large roster of companies are participating in the development, including Dashlane, 1Password, Bitwarden, Devolutions, NordPass, and Okta.

Now we’re in 2025, a lot more services are offering passkeys as a replacement for passwords and the NCSC believes they are the future of modern authentication. However, there are still some significant bumps in the road ahead. Here we set out the case for mass adoption of passkeys and outline the remaining issues which are hindering their widespread implementation. The NCSC will work alongside industry to help resolve these problems and help to get passkeys over the line.

“Passkeys,” the secure authentication mechanism built to replace passwords, are getting more portable and easier for organizations to implement thanks to new initiatives the FIDO Alliance announced on Monday.

For World Password Day, we’re sharing updates to passkeys across our products and sharing more ways we’re keeping people safe online.

Google has sold its own line of Titan Security Keys for several years now, and new USB-C and USB-A models with NFC let you store passkeys...

Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, les géants de la technologie adoptent tous les passkeys comme alternative aux mots de passe. Le système a aussi de quoi séduire les entreprises, tant pour sa sécurité que pour sa simplicité, gage de moins d’appels au support technique pour réinitialiser un mot de passe.

For the first time, we’ve begun rolling out passkeys, the easiest and most secure way to sign in to apps and websites and a major step toward a “passwordless future.”

With iOS 16 and macOS Ventura, Apple is introducing passkeys—a more convenient and secure alternative to passwords.