Let’s start with a smartphone. A user creates an account with a passkey for a service, that passkey gets stored on their smartphone, and they can use biometrics to sign in from then on. The private key is stored on the smartphone. Great.

But then how do you sign into that same service from a different device?

If it’s by using a password manager, some third party piece of software, How do you sign in on a device where you’re not allowed to install third party software?

  • credo@lemmy.world
    26·
    6 months ago

    How do you sign in on a device where you’re not allowed to install third party software?

    You don’t. Passkeys are very ecosystem-centric right now. If you are in apple, google, or Microsoft entirely, they will all allow you to move your passkeys around to different systems using the same basic mechanism they used for password keeping. Moving across ecosystems is absolutely broken - or rather - has never worked.

    I think there are mechanisms to allow passkeys to work via Bluetooth or even via camera, as an external authenticator essentially, but I’ve never personally tried them.

    • iarigby@lemmy.world
      1·
      6 months ago

      I use camera one for github on a device outside my icloud, works great. A few websites also allowed me to add second passkeys (bitwarden in addition to icloud)