Back in October 2022, Google started adding passkey support for its Android OS and its Chrome web browser. In May 2023, the company added passkey features for people who have a personal Google account. Today, Google is taking that support one step further by making passkey signing the default option for personal accounts.
In a blog post, Google stated:
This means the next time you sign in to your account, you’ll start seeing prompts to create and use passkeys, simplifying your future sign-ins. It also means you’ll see the “Skip password when possible” option toggled on in your Google Account settings.
While passkey sign-ins are now the default, the old-fashioned password is not going away anytime soon. Google says that the password signing option will remain on personal accounts and that they can turn off the “Skip password when possible" toggle in their account settings.
Google says that it has seen passkey support expand to other businesses, including Uber and eBay, and notes that the WhatsApp messaging service will soon add the passkey option sometime in the near future.
We have started to see even more passkey support being added to other platforms. In September, Apple released the iOS 17 update for its iPhones and iPads. Among other features, it allowed third-party iOS apps to enable passkey signing support. 1Password has already added that support for its iOS app and TikTok did the same for its own iOS app earlier this year. PayPal enabled passkey support for signing into its service in October 2022.
Microsoft is also adding passkey support with the latest "Moment 4" update for Windows 11. It will work while using a number of different browsers with this update, including Microsoft Edge, Chrome, Firefox, and more. Microsoft-owned Github recently enabled passkey support for its developer site for all users.