Google Chrome Says Goodbye To Passwords On Windows, Mac, Linux, Android

Update, Sept. 20, 2024: This story, originally published Sept. 19, now includes an explainer regarding password cracking and the use of hashes.

Passkeys are, without a doubt, the future of login security. 1Password has called them “nearly impossible for hackers to guess or intercept” and Google uses them to replace hardware key and two-factor authentication for high-risk users. Now Google has gone one step further in this move to a passwordless future: secure syncing across devices with Chrome on Windows, macOS, Linux and Android platforms right now, with iOS still in development but promised soon.

Google Announces Secure Passkey Sign-In Across (Nearly) All Your Devices

Until today, although pretty much everyone agrees that passkeys are both more straightforward to use and more secure than traditional password logins, Google only allowed you to save your passkeys to the Password Manager using Android. Sure, you could use them wherever you liked, but that involved scanning a QR code on your Android device, which, I can say from personal experience, made me look for alternative passkey providers such as 1Password and Apple. All that has changed with a new announcement by Chirag Desai, a Chrome product manager at Google, concerning updates that are now rolling out to make the experience as hassle-free as it should be. No QR codes required.

Once a passkey has been saved, no matter which device you used to do so, it will then automatically sync across your other devices so as to make signing in to any account or service just a matter of scanning your fingerprint, Desai announced. This new syncing ability revolves around a new Google Password Manager PIN that adds another layer of security to the process, ensuring “your passkeys are end-to-end encrypted and can’t be accessed by anyone, not even Google,” Desai said.

You will need to have either your Google Password Manager PIN or use the screen lock on your device when starting to use passkeys for the first time on a new Android device. However, no new apps are required as passkey support is already built into both Chrome and Android devices.

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