Comment by alwillis
5 days ago
From my experience, passkeys work great in the Apple ecosystem. Adding a passkey for a new site on my Mac results in that passkey syncing automatically on my iPhone and iPad via iCloud.
"But what if I lose all of my Apple devices in a freak boating accident?" people often ask or something like it. Apple has a procedure for this [1].
You can contact your "recovery contact" (a trusted friend or family member) that can help authenticate you to regain access to your account, especially if you're locked out or forgot your password.
On a new device, you login to your Apple account, make sure iCloud Keychain is enabled, and all of your credentials, including your passkeys, sync to your device.
I get it—not everyone wants or uses iCloud. Apparently, you can use 3rd party password managers like 1Password, Bitwarden, etc. to backup and recover your passkeys to use elsewhere.
Here's a video of an export from 1Password to the Passwords app on an iPhone [2].
[1]: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/passwords-devices-iph...
[2]: https://youtube.com/shorts/gJ8BzT73JzY?si=zSY8vp_v297IfCro
I don't fear loosing all my devices in a freak boating accident. I fear apple deciding they don't like me for whatever reason and then I am fucked.
It is why I never use "sign in with <google, meta, apple, whatever>"
True... but a majority don't care. And it works.
As always you are not compelled to that. Lets others enjoy the convenience of passkey.
But what I don't understand is how are passkeys improving what Apple provides here. You could have just done this with passwords and had all the ecosystem benefits you outlined.
You can't enter a passkey at the wrong website.
You still need a password to exist, so while the passkey won't activate the user can still leak the account's credentials.
To cover that gap, you get rid of passwords altogether, and now users lose access if the passkey fails to sync or isn't available on one of their devices (let's say a Kindle Fire tablet)
Passkeys being bound to the domain is neat, but not without tradeoffs and practical workarounds. At least that can't be the only aspect to look at when making a choice.
My password manager won't do that either
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Ok, great. What about in a mixed ecosystem like I’m using?
The 1password integration works great IME. When a site supports passkeys, 1password seems to offer to save the passkey, and at login time, a little popup appears from 1password asking if I want to use my passkey, and I can either enter my password, or use TouchID to unlock 1password.
I use this across iPhone, MacOS and Windows, and haven't run into any issues.
>1password
If the solution to smooth passkey use is “spend money” why the hell is anyone going to use passkeys over just using passwords for free?
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I put passkeys in both iCloud and Bitwarden. I count on having access to one or the other, or at least being able to recover access to one or the other, but it’s the same situation with my passwords generally
In fact I quite like having separate passkeys for each manager instead of one password and -maybe- separate TOTPs (usually not) shared between them
As mentioned a cross-platform password manager like Bitwarden is the way to go in this case. But yeah, the vast majority of internet users don’t use one.
You're in a mixed ecosystem. You unfortunately get mixed results.
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Get a Yubikey?
So the solution to my iDevice dying is that I have to buy a new one to maintain access to my accounts and have no option to move to non-Apple hardware?
Usually you can setup an alternate 2FA like TOTP, a recovery SMS, or something else you can use to prove who you are. And then once you're into the site, wipe the current passkey and setup a new one on your current device.
But if I can use any other form of 2FA, there is no way I'm using a passkey. The only way I would ever do so is if I have no other option.
I cannot think of any innovation that has required more defensive pleading for people to use it than passkeys. When a HN article has to be titled "passkeys are not a trap", the concept has already lost.
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What do you do when Apple ban your Apple account?
Seeing how effortlessly 1Password supports exporting to other clients really makes me want to use 1Password more. How does it handle other fields - Apple Passwords has like 5 fixed fields while 1P has dozens and custom fields?
A third party cloud solution that's not even open source I think and an attacker will get all your passcodes if he hacks them? No thank you.