Lance Whitney / Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET
Passkeys promise to replace passwords as a more secure and convenient login method. But they still have a way to go before fulfilling that promise. That's because passkeys are often way too difficult to set up on one device, let alone all the devices you use. The industry itself offers no standard or consistent method to save and store passkeys, so each company has cobbled together its own process, which may or may not work.
Also: Passkeys won't be ready for primetime until Google and other companies fix this
By far, the biggest obstacle to using passkeys is trying to synchronize them across all the browsers and devices that you use. Just because you save a passkey on your Android phone, for example, doesn't mean that it will be available on your Windows PC, or vice versa. That's why I turn to a password manager as a central way to save and sync passkeys across all the browsers and devices I use.
What if you don't have a password manager? Well, there's another route, at least if you use Chrome on your computers and mobile devices.
How to sync passkeys in your Chrome browser
To help you store and synchronize your passwords and passkeys, Google provides its own password manager. The Google Password Manager is not only built into Android but is accessible through Chrome on any platform. That means you can sync your passkeys across Chrome on Android, in Windows, on a Mac, and on an iPhone or iPad.
How does this all work? Here's how I tried it across all my PCs and mobile devices.
1. Review and set up Google Password Manager on Android Your first step should be to review the settings for Google Password Manager on your Android device. For this, go to Settings. The specific setting will vary based on the type of device, but you'll want to look for something that says: "Passwords & accounts" or "Passwords, passkeys & accounts." On a Samsung phone, you may need to hunt under the Security and privacy category to find the setting for "Passwords, passkeys & accounts." Also: How to set up and use passkeys across your iPhone, iPad, and Mac Once you track down the right screen, make sure that Google is listed and enabled as the default service for password management. Also, turn on the switch to automatically sync app data if it's off. From here, tap the entry for Google and set it as the Autofill option if it's not already set that way. Show more
Screenshot by Lance Whitney/ZDNET
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