Apple wants to ditch passwords and replace them with your face in iOS 15

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During one of Apple’s WWDC developer sessions, the company talked about the future of passwords, or better yet, a future without passwords on iOS 15.

Instead, Apple envisions a future where you use things like Face ID and Touch ID to sign up for and log in to services across the internet. Called Passkeys in iCloud Keychain (catchy name), there is still password-like activity happening in the background, but that is handled by the system.

As Mashable explains it, “this works by using the open WebAuthn standard to create a pair of cryptographic keys, one public and one private.’ Essentially, it means that you, the end-user, won’t need to keep up with a bunch of passwords.

At present and in the near future, this functionality is limited, as it will only work on iOS 15 and macOS Monterey. In addition, the feature will need to supported by the service you are signing up for.

Even with those current limitations, it’s definitely something to be excited about, as this would make services more secure and just generally simplify things. Maybe this will be how streaming services finally get people to stop sharing passwords...

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Josiah Motley

Former KnowTechie editor.