Google is rolling out passkeys to make your accounts more secure

After PayPal, Dashlane, Yahoo, and a few others, Google is the latest firm to adopt passkeys. The company recently announced that you can now create and use passkeys on your personal Google accounts. You will no longer require a password or 2-Step Verification (2SV) to sign in.

Passkeys are a more convenient and secure alternative to passwords that you use to sign in to apps and services. You don’t need to remember them or save them anywhere, such as a password manager app. Passkeys aren’t stored in the cloud either, so they are safe from data breaches or phishing attacks as well. Everything happens on-device.

When you create a passkey for an app, your trusted device saves it locally. You can then proceed to sign in using the device’s lock code or biometric authentication. No need to enter the password anymore.

Google, along with Apple, Microsoft, and many other tech firms part of the FIDO Alliance, has been working on this passwordless future for some time now. Several companies have rolled out passkey support in recent months, although in limited capacity alongside passwords and 2SV.

As said earlier, these include PayPal, Dashlane, and Yahoo, while some others have announced their plans to support the tech soon. Google has now joined this group. It recently started rolling out passkeys as an additional option that you can use to sign in to your Google account on all major platforms.

While passkeys are created and stored on your device locally, some firms offer the option to sync them across your multiple devices. But if that option is not available, you’ll have to create a new passkey for the same account on every device you own.

For temporary uses, there is also an option to “use a passkey from another device”. This will not sync or passkey to the new device but allow you to sign in on it using an existing device where you have created a passkey. You should avoid creating passkeys on shared devices, though.

You can now use passkeys to sign in to your Google accounts

Users with a personal Google account can now create passkeys from here. Once done, Google will let you use the passkey to sign in. Password and 2SV aren’t going away, though. At least not just yet. The company says, “Like any new beginning, the change to passkeys will take time”.

It is still working on improving the experience while expanding support to more devices and platforms. Google Workspace administrators will also “soon have the option to enable passkeys for their end-users during sign-in.”