Apple Previews New Import/Export Feature To Make Passkeys More Interoperable

During this week's Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple unveiled a secure import/export feature for passkeys that addresses one of their biggest limitations: lack of interoperability across platforms and credential managers. The feature, built in collaboration with the FIDO Alliance, enables encrypted, user-initiated passkey transfers between apps and systems. Ars Technica's Dan Goodin says it "provides the strongest indication yet that passkey developers are making meaningful progress in improving usability." From the report: "People own their credentials and should have the flexibility to manage them where they choose," the narrator of the Apple video says. "This gives people more control over their data and the choice of which credential manager they use." The transfer feature, which will also work with passwords and verification codes, provides an industry-standard means for apps and OSes to more securely sync these credentials.

As the video explains: "This new process is fundamentally different and more secure than traditional credential export methods, which often involve exporting an unencrypted CSV or JSON file, then manually importing it into another app. The transfer process is user initiated, occurs directly between participating credential manager apps and is secured by local authentication like Face ID. This transfer uses a data schema that was built in collaboration with the members of the FIDO Alliance. It standardizes the data format for passkeys, passwords, verification codes, and more data types. The system provides a secure mechanism to move the data between apps. No insecure files are created on disk, eliminating the risk of credential leaks from exported files. It's a modern, secure way to move credentials."

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