Passwords have permeated our lives. As the number of sites, services, and apps we log into continues to grow, people need help creating, managing, and accessing them. There are great third-party apps that can help, but the reality is that most people won’t download them, and even fewer will pay to buy them. That’s why Apple’s approach to passwords is so important.
But what’s impressive about this initiative is that the company has gone to great lengths to make it easy for users to practice good passwords. Password updates for iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and macOS Sonoma are great examples, making sharing passwords easier than ever and allowing users to start adopting passkeys, a superior authentication method compared to traditional passwords. .
shared password
Shared Passwords is the most important new security feature in iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and macOS Sonoma. Apple’s approach to passwords has come a long way in recent years, but until now password sharing has been a one-time thing for him. However, this year’s OS update allows users to share their entire set of passwords with friends, family, and other trusted users. This is a big problem because in previous OS versions, this limitation was one of the most common reasons why many readers still use third-party password managers.
When you first open the Passwords tab in Safari on macOS, the Settings app in iOS and iPadOS, or the Passwords section in Mac System Preferences, you’ll see a new option near the top of the list of passwords called Share your passwords. Masu. family. ‘ This message might make you think that password sharing is limited to iCloud Family Sharing groups, but that’s not the case. You can share with people you trust, whether they’re in an iCloud sharing group or not.
I’ve started setting up a shared password group for my family, but for now it’s limited to me and my son, who also runs the macOS Sonoma beta. Also, during the setup process, you will notice that the shared password can only be accessed by devices with the latest OS. While this may be frustrating for early adopters of the OS in your family or other password-sharing groups, it’s a good reason to encourage your family and other contacts to update their devices.
After you add someone, you can search for passwords and choose the password you want to share. The final step is to notify the person you have shared your password with that it has been shared. If you want to edit the group later, reopen the group and you’ll have the option to manage members. From here you can add new members, remove users from the group, or delete the entire group. Also note that deleting a group does not remove the password. Instead, they are returned to (My Passwords) and serve as the default password group.
The creator of a shared password list has sole control over adding and removing members from the group, but once a member is part of a group, each member can add and remove passwords, regardless of who added them first. Masu. Also, the password only exists in her one group at a time. For example, if you want to share your Hulu password with your family, you can add it to your family’s password group and it will be removed from the My Passwords section. If you want the password to exist in two places for her, you will need to create a second password entry as if it were a new password.
You might wonder if having your passwords stored in one place makes it harder to find them if you can’t remember which list they’re stored in, but that’s not actually the case. . The main (password) view includes a search field to search all passwords. Anything that’s been shared with you will appear in search results with a small “2-person” sharing icon to indicate it’s part of a shared list. You can also search individual lists, so finding passwords doesn’t feel any harder than before.
Passwords can also be easily migrated. When you open the password details view, you will see a Group field that you can use to move the password to any group. You can also set up a new group from the drop-down menu. Alternatively, you can access the same menu by long-pressing the password in iOS 17 or iPadOS 17, or right-clicking the password in macOS Sonoma. Another way to move passwords is through the “plus” button. The context menu that appears has a “Move passwords to group” option that displays all passwords in other groups and allows you to move them to the current group.
Password movement has the unique feature that only group owners can move passwords. I called this a “quirk” because any member of the group can remove the password, and everyone, including the person who set up the list, will no longer have access to it. Moving a password from a shared group has the same effect as removing other members, which is not possible. This is a strange limitation, but it’s a sufficiently special case that I don’t think it’s a problem in most situations.
In my testing, I expect that creating a list of shared passwords is easy and more than sufficient to meet the needs of a large group of family members, roommates, and other trusted contacts. That might be enough for some small businesses, but when setting up a password sharing list with Federico, I quickly missed the categories of passwords I had set up in 1Password. Apple’s Shared Password also doesn’t include the ability to set permission levels or attach documents, which are possible with third-party password managers. Using separate lists and password-protected notes in the Notes app can get around these limitations, but it’s more cumbersome than using a third-party app if those features are important to you.
Until very recently, my use of shared password groups was limited because not all of my devices had the latest OS, and very few people around me were running beta versions. I was there. However, I plan to migrate some shared passwords that my family shares to Apple’s system. Apple’s system may not be the best solution for shared MacStories passwords, but I expect it to be much easier than forcing your family to download and learn a third-party app.
Apple ID passkey
iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and macOS Sonoma automatically generate a passkey for your Apple ID. Passkeys are based on cross-platform web standards and are a way to replace traditional passwords with on-device biometric authentication methods. For Mac, this means the Touch ID sensor. iPhones and iPads use Touch ID or Face ID, depending on the device. Passkeys are synced across all your Apple devices using iCloud Keychain, so you can use these biometric methods to sign in with your Apple ID on every device you own.
Right after WWDC, passkeys for the icloud.com and apple.com sites became available to anyone running macOS Sonoma, iOS 17, or iPadOS 17, so I’ve been using my Apple ID all summer. I am using a passkey. The best thing about passkeys is that once you enable them, you can use them on all your devices and use the same authentication method that you use to unlock your device, so you can quickly forget them. More secure than passwords. It will be years before most apps and websites support passkeys, but several websites I use have implemented passkeys, including CVS, my family’s pharmacy, Shop by Shopify, and Tailscale. We are already seeing it being done.
The days of the Apple Passwords app are long gone.
Looking at the current state of Apple’s password management support, the questions we and others at MacStories have been asking for the past few years are more relevant than ever.
Why isn’t there a separate system app for passwords?
Apple is doing a better job than ever at revealing passwords system-wide, but users still have to dig into their settings frequently.
iOS and iPadOS settings and Mac system settings require a deeper makeover than the type of design updates seen in macOS Ventura. Both Settings apps have too many features, so removing Password and making them standalone apps is a great way to reduce the complexity of these apps.
In the bigger picture, the passwords never fit well into the settings anyway. In my opinion, the Passwords app is more like a specialized note-taking app than a settings app. Managing passwords does not directly affect the operating system, unlike changing from light to dark mode or turning off notifications. Currently, the Apple OS password feature is very competitive with standalone password apps, so we hope to see it built into a separate app in next year’s OS update.
Every year, Apple improves the way we manage passwords on our devices, and this year is no exception. Shared passwords make managing sharing among family and other trusted groups much easier than before. Generating an Apple ID passkey should help drive passkey adoption as users learn how useful passkeys are and begin to wonder why more sites and services don’t support them yet. I’d love to see Apple’s password features built into their apps, but that doesn’t mean they’ve done anything to make it easier than ever to generate, manage, and access passwords across all Apple OSes. It doesn’t take away from the great work being done.