Apple Will Finally Let You Take Your Passkeys With You

Apple used WWDC 25 to quietly solve one of passkeys’ biggest practical drawbacks: lock-in. In a developer session and follow-up documentation, the company previewed a secure import/export flow that will ship this fall in iOS 26, macOS 26 Tahoe, iPadOS 26, and visionOS 26.



Until now, a passkey created inside Apple’s Passwords app, or inside any other credential manager, was stuck there. If you switched platforms or tried a competing password manager, you had to fall back on old-school passwords or recreate every account from scratch.



Image Credit: Apple



The new functionality handles some major headaches and does so securely:




User-initiated, local only: Transfers happen directly between two credential-manager apps on the same device, secured by Face ID, Touch ID, or the device passcode—no plain-text CSV files ever hit the disk.



Standards-based: Apple co-designed the underlying schema with the FIDO Alliance, so the mechanism also covers traditional passwords, 2FA codes, and other secrets.



APIs for third parties: Developers can add support using the new ASCredentialExportManager and ASCredentialImportManager classes. 1Password has announced its intent to adopt the standard in 2024, and I expect other password managers to follow before the public release ships.




A Push Toward a Password-Free Future



Apple framed the export feature as the final piece in a five-part passkey upgrade story that also includes a streamlined account-creation API, automatic upgrades for password-only accounts, and new endpoint signals that keep credential managers in sync. Together, the changes aim to accelerate adoption. The company cited FIDO research showing that 69 percent of people already have at least one passkey, and that services like Google and TikTok see dramatically higher sign-in success rates with passkeys than with passwords.



The import/export spec will only be useful if other platforms reciprocate. Google already syncs passkeys through Chrome and Android; Microsoft has hinted at support for the FIDO schema in Windows 12. If those pieces fall into place, and if big credential managers ship timely updates, moving your digital keys could soon feel as routine as AirDropping a photo.



Apple’s passkey export button won’t grab headlines like Liquid Glass or AI-powered Siri, but it removes a critical roadblock on the road to killing passwords for good.