Whether you have an iPhone, iPad, Mac, or even a Windows machine, you’ll soon be able to use a secure password manager for free across an Apple account.
The times they are a changing, and passwords are changing with them.
The gradual shift to both virtual and physical passkeys is happening slowly, but it is happening, so we at least know what the future of passwords is. Before that happens, however, many of us are still living with the knowledge that our passwords mightn’t be the best they can be.
Good passwords are complex and almost always impossible to recall. Even if you come up with a clever cypher for your passwords, there’s a good chance that you’re going to forget something about them, and force a password reset. We’d hazard a bet that most people are clicking “forgot password” long before they can recall a complex password, making life that little bit more complex each and every time.
It’s no wonder so many of us have bad passwords, and why we struggle to move on to good passwords.
That’s possibly why some have turned to password managers to help do what’s in the name: manage their passwords. Password management services provide easy ways to store passwords for easy access, with web browsers and mobile platforms iOS and Android joining in on the concept, as well.
With a phone and tablet, you can easily save your passwords to accounts, and share them for use on those devices. Apple has Keychain and Google has its Password Manager, and if you own an iPhone or Android (respectively), you’ve likely dealt with each of these.
But what happens when you want to bring those passwords over to another device?
This is typically where a password manager comes in, but Apple has something on the way that could mean more people natively begin to use one without even realising it.
An addition to iOS, iPadOS, macOS, visionOS for the Vision Pro, and even Windows, Apple is building a “Passwords” app that will allow passwords to be synced across devices.
On paper, it’s not an exciting announcement, but in reality, the idea is genuinely excellent, as it helps solve the password dilemma for more people, and may not mean handing money to a password service.
The app will be part of iOS 18 and iPadOS 18, and will also be a part of macOS Sequoia, as well. Interestingly, however, Apple is also making its Password app for Windows, meaning folks with an iPhone and a Windows laptop will be able to connect the dots and get their passwords from one system to the other.
And it’s not just website passwords, but also WiFi passwords, passkeys, verification codes, and alerts for when passwords have been used several times or picked up in a data leak.
In short, Apple’s upcoming Passwords app is one of the most important apps for an iPhone owner to have in their life. It signals just how important passwords are for its customers, whether or not you have a laptop of any kind, which many do.
Android users won’t quite get the same support from Apple here, and that’s hardly surprising. While Apple does make Android apps — Apple Music and Apple TV+, primarily — extending the password keychain to Android customers would likely defeat the purpose of what the Passwords app is trying to do: securing passwords for Apple customers. However, it’s possible it could come later down the track.
Right now, however, Passwords is an intriguing look at how device makers can develop something of great importance to everyone in a world dealing with the ever-growing number of breaches, hacks, and scams. It’s an important development, and one that could see better passwords rolled out for more people, which can only be a good thing.
