Popular password manager app Dashlane has announced native support for passkeys. In a blog post on Wednesday, the company said that Android 14 will bring this more secure authentication system to its app. Competing firm 1Password also recently announced passkey support, which will arrive later this year.
Passkey is a relatively new authentication system that is touted to replace traditional passwords in the future. Works towards this passwordless future have been ongoing for the past few years, but those efforts started to bear fruits recently. Google last year adopted passkeys in Android and Chrome. Apple and Microsoft also added support for the new tech to their platforms — the former’s iOS, macOS, and Safari; the latter’s Windows and Edge.
Your phone plays an important role in all of this. Google will store a “passkey” on your Android device that will verify your identity when you try to log into apps and websites. Instead of remembering and entering a password, you just have to unlock your phone using biometrics. Google will know that you are who you say you are and grant you access to the app. It works similarly on devices powered by other platforms. With cloud sync, your passkey is securely transferred to your new devices as well.
But until now, passkey synchronization is only possible on vendor platforms, i.e. first-party password manager services from Google, Apple, Microsoft, and others. Third-party solutions can’t manage your passkeys, let alone sync across devices. Thankfully, that’s changing on Android with the upcoming version. Android 14 will allow third-party apps like Dashlane and 1Password to manage passkeys. And they are quick to adopt this feature.
Dashlane will let you manage passkeys with the arrival of Android 14
According to Dashlane, its users will be able to create a new passkey and save it in the encrypted Dashlane vault once the feature is available later this year. They can also import an existing passkey and sign in with it. You’ll have to wait a few more months for that, though. Android 14 isn’t expected to debut until the second half of the year. Google recently released the first developer preview. Beta builds should start coming next month.
“When creating a passkey, Dashlane will generate an asymmetric key pair, storing the private key securely in the user’s vault and returning the public key to the relying party. When signing in with a passkey, the relying party will send a challenge that Dashlane will sign with the private key, sending the response back to authenticate the user,” the company explains. You can see a demo of the feature in Dashlane’s tweet embedded below. We will let you know if more password manager services announce native support for passkeys in the future.
Manage passkeys with Dashlane on Android later this year ? #fido #passkeys #passwordless pic.twitter.com/myFKDPAYF7
— Dashlane (@dashlane) February 23, 2023
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