Passkeys Were Great—But They Were Stuck
Passkeys promise a future without passwords, replacing them with cryptographic keys unlocked by your fingerprint, face, or device PIN. Instead of typing a password, your device proves to a website that it holds the right private key, making logins faster and significantly more resistant to phishing. The catch until now was portability: once you created passkeys in one ecosystem or password manager, you effectively locked yourself into that tool. Moving passwords between apps has long been simple, but moving passkeys was either impossible or highly limited. That lack of password manager portability made many security‑conscious users hesitate, because switching tools later could mean losing access or manually recreating credentials site by site. The arrival of standardized passkey import export capabilities is finally removing this friction point—transforming passkeys from a neat experiment into a practical, long‑term replacement for passwords.
Google Password Manager Passkeys Catch Up with Import and Export
On Android, Google Password Manager is quietly preparing full passkey import and export support. A hidden interface, surfaced by testers, shows options to move passkeys in and out of Google’s manager, confirming that the underlying Credential Exchange Protocol (CXP) plumbing is already in place. CXP, developed by the FIDO Alliance, defines how passkeys can securely migrate between apps and devices. Because passkey transfers on Android rely on Google Play Services and Google Password Manager, this groundwork is crucial: once enabled, it should allow not only Google Password Manager passkeys to move freely, but also let other Android managers that support passkeys—such as OEM solutions like Samsung Pass—participate. For everyday users, this means that building a library of passkeys on Android no longer has to feel like a one‑way bet. The ecosystem is shifting toward true password manager portability instead of platform lock‑in.
Apple Passwords App Shows How Seamless Passkey Portability Can Be
Apple’s Passwords app has already implemented passkey import export in a way that demonstrates how smooth the experience can become. Using iOS and macOS, you can choose “Export Data to Another App” in Passwords, select the logins that contain passkeys (or everything), and then hand them off directly to any supported password manager. The same interface appears when importing passkeys from a third‑party app into Apple Passwords. Users report successfully moving passkeys from Apple Passwords to tools like 1Password, and back again, with a few prompts rather than complex manual steps. Crucially, this process relies on the same FIDO‑backed specifications that Google is now enabling on Android. When both major platform vendors and leading independent managers support these flows, vendor lock‑in fears fade, making it far easier to embrace passkeys without worrying about future flexibility.
Why Passkey Portability Fixes a Major Adoption Roadblock
Passkey security rests on solid cryptography and device‑level authentication, but adoption has always been about trust and control as much as about math. Many users were wary of building their entire digital life around passkeys if it meant being tied to one platform or app forever. Without reliable password manager portability, changing devices, switching ecosystems, or trying a new manager risked breaking logins or forcing tedious account recovery. CXP‑based passkey migration changes that calculus. It brings passkeys closer to how we already treat passwords: highly portable, with export and import options across competing tools. That parity reassures users that they can adopt passkeys today and still move providers tomorrow. As more managers on both Android and Apple platforms converge on the same standard, passkeys stop being an experimental add‑on and start behaving like the default way to authenticate online.
What You Can Do Now to Prepare for a Passkey‑First Future
You do not have to wait for every app and website to switch to passkeys before taking advantage of this shift. Start by enabling passkeys wherever your existing accounts and password manager offer them, prioritizing your most important services. Make sure you are using a manager that either already supports CXP‑style migration or has announced support—on Apple devices, that includes the built‑in Passwords app plus major third‑party options, while on Android the emerging Google Password Manager passkeys migration will underpin similar features. Periodically review your saved credentials, noting which logins already use passkeys. When passkey import export becomes visible in your manager’s settings, test moving a small subset to another app you trust, so you understand the flow before relying on it at scale. The more comfortable you become with managing passkeys today, the easier the transition will be as they become the standard way to sign in.