Apple’s subsequent spherical of OS updates will introduce a long-overdue characteristic for anybody making an attempt to stay in a world with out passwords: a seamless, safe solution to export and import passkeys throughout platforms and apps. Right here’s the way it’s going to work.
As famous by Ars Technica’s Dan Goodin (through SixColors), the brand new functionality, which Apple demonstrated throughout WWDC25, addresses one of many greatest ache factors with passkeys thus far.
Till now, passkeys created on a Mac, iPhone, or iPad had been largely trapped contained in the Apple ecosystem, syncing nice throughout iCloud-connected gadgets, however with no life like solution to transfer them to Home windows, Android, and even some third-party credential managers.
That has led to comprehensible criticism that passkeys, whereas promising from a safety standpoint, felt like a brand new type of vendor lock-in. Should you misplaced entry to your Apple machine or needed to change platforms, your passkeys had been successfully stranded.
A protocol problem
The shortage of portability wasn’t simply an Apple drawback. It’s been an industry-wide problem because the FIDO Alliance labored to hammer out safe methods for various platforms and apps to speak to one another with out undermining the entire safety mannequin that makes passkeys value utilizing within the first place.
Now, with assist from the FIDO Alliance (which incorporates Google, Microsoft, 1Password, Dashlane, Bitwarden, and lots of others), Apple is rolling out native help for passkey import and export. The characteristic will arrive later this yr as a part of iOS 26, macOS Tahoe 26, iPadOS 26, and visionOS 26.
And this isn’t only for passkeys. Apple says the identical system will enable safe switch of passwords and verification codes too.
No messy recordsdata, no handbook exports
What’s necessary right here is how the method works. In contrast to conventional password exports that dump your credentials into an unencrypted CSV or JSON file, this new methodology is end-to-end encrypted, app-to-app, and requires native authentication (like Face ID or Contact ID) to proceed.
The information doesn’t sit round in a dangerous export file in your disk. As a substitute, the switch occurs instantly between credential supervisor apps—or from the system keychain to an app—and makes use of a standardized knowledge format developed by the FIDO Alliance for cross-compatibility.
“This offers folks extra management over their knowledge and the selection of which credential supervisor they use,” Apple’s demo narrator defined. It’s a notable shift in tone, particularly given how tightly built-in Apple’s Keychain ecosystem has been till now.
The characteristic will roll out later this yr. And for anybody who’s been hesitating to dive absolutely into passkeys for worry of ecosystem lock-in, that is precisely the type of progress we’ve been ready for.
To dig into the technical particulars, take a look at Apple’s “What’s new in passkeys” session on the Apple Developer web site.
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