Google announced the first passkey support for Android and Chrome. This first phase will enable developers to access the technology and add support for this feature to their websites and apps using Google Play Services beta and Chrome Canary.
Google hopes to roll out support for this feature to stable channels later this year, by which time some developers will have already incorporated the technology into their products. For those who don’t know, passkey is a technology that eliminates the need for people to remember passwords for different services. Passwords are synchronized in password managers like Google Password Manager and work across different devices. Cloud backups help ensure you always have access to accounts, even if your device is lost.
The Passkey key interface is similar to the autofill interface that Chrome mobile users are already familiar with. Using a passkey is as simple as choosing the account you want to log in to and then using your fingerprint, face or screen lock to gain access. If you want, you can also use the password on your phone to log in to a nearby device. The website you want to log into on your computer can offer a QR code that you can scan on your phone to confirm access.
The next milestone for Google will be to bring API support to native Android apps. Developers adding support to their apps will give users the option to use their passkey or password to log in. As Passkey becomes more popular, the use of passwords that can be guessed by hackers seems to decrease.
Passkey is an industry standard supported by Apple, Microsoft and Google as part of the FIDO Alliance and W3C.