Passkeys are evidently the future of authentication on the internet, fusing the benefits of old-school passwords, biometric authentication, and two-factor authentication. After the FIDO alliance and its members set the ball rolling last year, we’ve witnessed some of our favorite password managers hop on the bandwagon and introduce passkey support. FIDO Alliance member, 1Password, is one among the early adopters, and today, the company announced support for passkeys on Android.
Passkeys are touted as the future of passwords because they are virtually phishing-proof, and make sign-ins more convenient for users. The dangers of password reuse are eliminated as well, because when you authenticate via fingerprint, a unique cryptographic key stored on your device is matched with the one stored with the service. These keys are complex character strings, so you will need a reliable password manager to store them for you.
1Password rose to the occasion and started beta testing passkey support on Android in December last year. The credential manager already supports passkeys on desktop browsers on Windows and iOS, and is now expanding to Android. To get started, users need to have the latest version of the 1Password app installed on their device running Android 14 or newer.
In the app, tap the Watchtower option in the bottom navigation bar, and you should see a list of all the apps installed on your device, which support passkey authentication. 1Password recommends starting with WhatsApp, Amazon, and Uber. If you’re signing up in an app, just remember to set up a passkey if available, and save it to 1Password. For now, you cannot authenticate on websites using a passkey stored in the 1Password app while browsing on an Android device, because Google hasn’t released the API to enable passkey use in Chrome for Android.
However, unlike Google Password Manager which works only on Chrome, Chrome OS, and Android, 1Password proudly claims it works on most popular operating systems, and also offers extensions for popular web browsers such as Chrome, Brave, Firefox, etc. With the growing support for authentication via passkeys in apps and on websites, 1Password’s latest feature should help users on Android stay secure online without sacrificing convenience.
That said, passkeys aren’t without their issues, and certainly aren’t immune to attacks, so your online safety still depends on careful usage of this new authentication technology, much like passwords.
Maybe if we start telling people the brain is an app they will start using it!
