Google has announced the expansion of its passkey upgrades feature that you can currently find on Pixel phones, and is working with new partners to bring the added security to more accounts.
Passkey upgrades is a feature that Google added to Pixel phones as part of its December Pixel feature drop in 2023. At that time it also introduced new AI camera features coming to the Pixel 8 series phones. If you’re unfamiliar with passkeys, that’s not surprising. Passkeys have yet to gain wide adoption but they are available on a handful of apps and websites. If you have accounts with companies like eBay, Best Buy, or Adobe for example, you’ll be able to set up and use passkeys instead of passwords. Apple also supports passkeys for its accounts on iOS.
Google is trying to spread the good word about passkeys because they’re more secure than traditional passwords. They also provide more resistance against phishing attacks and you don’t have to remember anything. “using a passkey is as simple as unlocking your device with your face or fingerprint, or your PIN/pattern/password,” Google says.
Google expands passkey upgrades to include new partners on Pixel devices
If you have a Pixel phone, and you’ve never used or set up passkeys before, it’s really rather easy. Especially now with the passkey upgrades. Google made it dead simple by having the password manager guide you through the process. That being said, it’s not as simple as an alert just popping up and telling you “hey, you’ve got accounts that can be upgraded to passkeys.” You’ll still need to get to the right location in settings to change things over.
In settings, scroll to passwords and accounts, then tap on the little cog wheel button to the right of the “Google” account which should be at the very top. From there, tap on Google Password Manager and you’ll see a message about upgrading passkeys at the top of this page with a “simplify your sign-in” message. This little card will tell you how many of your accounts that are stored on the phone will support paskey upgrades. And after tapping on that card password manager walks you through a few steps for each account.
Google is working to get more accounts and companies to adopt passkeys. For the time being, you can use them with 10 different accounts. This includes Best Buy, DocuSign, eBay, Uber, Yahoo Japan, Kayak, Adobe, PayPal, TikTok, and Money Forward. These accounts are partners for Google’s password manager to help guide you through passkey upgrades feature. But passkeys are still supported on a number of other websites outside of it, such as Dashlane, GoDaddy, and NVIDIA. Passkeys are also the default for Google accounts.
The passkey upgrades will spread to other platforms
Google doesn’t say when, but it does confirm that the passkey upgrades feature of Google Password Manager will expand to other platforms. It simply says “in the future” though. So there’s currently no telling how long it will take or what platforms are included.
2024-01-31 15:07:14