Comment by jeroenhd
5 days ago
> What happens when I go to the same site on a different platform?
You click the "log in with QR code" button, scan the QR code, and authenticate using your phone.
Unfortunately that only works from phone (and watch) to computer. If you don't have the passkey available, you click "forgot password" and set a new one, same as with a password.
That's part of the horrible experience I hate. why should I have to have my phone to login on my computer.
You only do it if you want to. You can put your passkey in keepassxc or 1password or bitwarden or google's password vault or any other cross-platform passkey platform.
It's only a problem if you pick a platform that locks you out, even then there's workarounds. It's not a replacement for logging in every day, it's more a replacement for typing over the 64 character random password from your phone's password manager on the library computer.
It's easy to install Chrome on most devices and even iCloud Passwords has an okayish and getting better Windows app today that works in supported browsers. (It would be nice if it also acted as a Windows-wide plugin for Passkeys, but it doesn't yet today.)
You can use it computer to computer, too, as long as the laptop has a camera to read QR codes.
In theory phones and watches could implement the other direction and generate the QR codes, there's just less pressure on the ecosystems to make that easy to do so it's not there in practice today.
In theory, I guess, but dragging a desktop to my laptop to log in is a bit much. We need a better solution for that.
The CTAP2 protocol has better alternatives, https://github.com/fmeum/WearAuthn is possible because we already can do better. I just hope it'll be implemented at some point (though, realistically, the future is phone-first, despite how much I dislike the implications that carries).