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Comment by croes

5 days ago

But you can’t simply switch to Android without recreating every single passkey. Sounds like vendor lock-in to me

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croes

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alwillis  5 days ago

> But you can’t simply switch to Android without recreating every single passkey. Sounds like vendor lock-in to me

Not so fast. Migrating passkeys from iOS to Android is possible now; migrating from Android to iOS is still being worked on.

Ricky Mondello's team at Apple created the Passwords app which brought passkeys to iOS, macOS, etc.

The entire presentation is worth watching if you’re interested in passkeys; the the clip below starts at 24:00 mark where they talk about migrating between platforms.

    Starting with iOS 26.5, you can choose to move passkeys and passwords
    from Apple Passwords to Google Password Manager. However, Android still
    needed "a future update" to receive them. That same update is meant to
    add transfers from Android back to iPhone [1].

The FIDO Alliance created a specification in 2024 called Credential Exchange Format [2] for moving credentials including passkeys, between passkey managers on the same device and across platforms.

In other words, being able to move passkeys between devices and platforms has always been part of the plan.

[1]: https://youtu.be/yVadD-Lfrfk?t=1454

[2]: https://fidoalliance.org/specs/cx/cxf-v1.0-ps-errata-2026030...

Onavo  5 days ago

Well designed platforms and auth frameworks allow adding multiple passkeys. The problem is this requirement was never coded into the passkey standard.

  • al_borland  5 days ago

    That still requires recreating every passkey, even if both can exist at once. If I want 50 sites to use a passkey on macOS and Linux, I need to go through the setup process 100 times, and all 50 sites will likely handle it slightly differently.

    It also requires foresight if switching. I ran into this with 2FA as well. When I got a new phone, after setup it offered to wipe the old one, I declined. When I went to open my 2FA app for work on the new phone, it needed to be setup. I needed the 2FA on my old phone to login to the portal and setup the new phone. Had I wiped my old phone when prompted, I would have been locked out and on the phone with the help desk. This same scenario can happen with Passkeys.

madeofpalk  5 days ago

Yes you can. You can export your passkeys and then import them into whatever android password manager, or 1Password.

  • ipsento606  5 days ago

    I was under the impression that most credential managers won't allow you to export a passkey to a plain text format, but will only allow limited app-to-app transfer of keys (with a limited selection of compatible apps only)

    • comex  5 days ago

      At least on iOS it’s any app that implements the protocol. That includes Bitwarden, which is server-based but self-hostable. In the future it should also include apps like Strongbox and KeePassium which store the private keys directly in a portable .kdbx file.

  • croes  5 days ago

    I want to import them in Android nit another app and you can export to an Android app only to another app on your iPhone