Colin Thierry
Published on: October 13, 2022
Google announced on Wednesday that it’s introducing passkey support to its Chrome web browser and the Android operating system in order to simplify sign-ins across apps, websites, and devices.
“Passkeys are a significantly safer replacement for passwords and other phishable authentication factors. They cannot be reused, don’t leak in server breaches, and protect users from phishing attacks,” Google said in its announcement.
Passkey support for developers on Android and Chrome will enable key capabilities towards cross-platform passwordless logins. This includes allowing users to create and use passkeys on Android devices (synced securely through Google Password Manager) and enabling developers to add passkey support on their websites with Chrome using the WebAuthn application programming interface (API) on Android and other platforms.
Passkeys are securely backed up and synced to the cloud in order to prevent lockouts if the users loses access to the device they were generated on. They also can be used for signing into websites on an Android device or for signing into websites on another device using an Android device.
Since passkeys are built on industry standards, they work across a variety of platforms and web browsers with the same user experience, including Windows, macOS, iOS, and ChromeOS.
Developers can try them out today by enrolling in the Google Play Services beta and using Chrome Canary. Passkey support will officially be introduced to stable channels later in 2022.
“Our next milestone in 2022 will be an API for native Android apps. Passkeys created through the web API will work seamlessly with apps that are affiliated with the same domain, and vice versa,” Google said.
“The native API will give apps a unified way to let the user pick either a passkey, if they have one, or a saved password. This shared experience for both types of users aids the transition to passkeys,” the tech giant added.
