Export keys securely from Passwords to third-party managers
I ranted about the joy of passkeys and some of their limitations a few weeks ago, and that prompted a question from Six Colors member Ampsonic1, a naturally occurring and renewable source of excellent queries:
Can you use 1Password to store a passkey for an Apple Account?
Unfortunately, you can’t yet! Apple uses a unique process to generate the passkey for an Apple Account—it’s generated on device, the only time I am aware of this ever happens for a passkey. This makes it uniquely the only passkey that requires an Apple device to generate or use.2 It doesn’t even show up in Passwords, because it’s a different kind of beast.
Answered.
But, oh, there is more to talk about.
I have been reluctant to recommend 1Password or any password manager to hold your passkeys unless you regularly use non-Apple devices or are absolutely all in on 1Password (or another ecosystem) to the near exclusion of Passwords and iCloud Keychain as your password manager and sync solution.
The reason had two components: utility and portability.
- It’s very useful to have integrated support for passkey filling across all your Apple devices with zero extra effort. This is true with third-party password managers, but because I started using passkeys with built-in support, I was invested in it.
- You couldn’t yet move passkeys across ecosystems, so unless a site or app supported creating multiple passkeys for your account, you were stuck, unless you went through a rigamarole to disable and re-enable the passkey.3
Suppose you could easily copy passkeys among password-management ecosystems, eliminating the second point? In that case, the first point matters much less. Fortunately, we are on the verge of this major change! Along with portability, introduced in iOS 26, iPadOS 26, and macOS 26 Tahoe, comes a few other passkey (and password) improvements. Apple didn’t document any of these in its release notes for the operating systems because they all require third-party buy-in, which is already starting to happen.
Bringing passkeys in line with passwords and raising them higher
I think passkeys are the bee’s knees, so anything that makes them easier to adopt is a great move in my book, as it will make everyone’s lives easier and their identities more secure. At WWDC 2025, Apple’s Andrew Abosh presented changes that are now in production releases to smooth the passkey wheels further.
Three of these are at the website end and require websites to make changes in their authentication software to take advantage. First, sites can now offer a streamlined sign-up process that Apple devices will pick up on, making it easy to generate a passkey as to accept a password recommendation from Passwords (or third-party password managers). Second, a website can push updates to your registered account—like if you change your email address—to the password manager so that those details associated with your passkey remain in sync. Third, there’s now an automatic upgrade workflow that lets a website prompt you to shift from password to passkey.4
But the particular issue above, portability, was addressed at timestamp 19:11 in the session.5 This standard has been in the works for a few years, and the FIDO Alliance—the group that has been moving us towards a “password-free” future, seriously—released a spec last October, then celebrated Apple’s news in June of this year.
You can see this in action with the latest operating system updates (step-by-step instructions next). When you use export in iOS 26, iPadOS 26, or Tahoe, you’re prompted for a destination app instead of relying on the old method, which was an unencrypted comma-separated value (CSV) file. The dialog notes, “Your items are securely transferred to the app you choose.”
So that’s that. But what about 1Password? Let’s walk through the export process.
Import and export a passkey in the most secure way
The only bad news about the above is that the major password-manager developers haven’t all updated their systems yet to support this FIDO standard as implemented by Apple:
- 1Password has no information about a timeline for adoption. (I sent a query.)
- Bitwarden is ready to go as of its new release on September 23, the day I started writing this column!
- Dashlane also added support around the same time. Timing is everything.
I’ll walk you through exporting from the Passwords app in iOS 26:6
- Open Passwords.
- Tap the more … button and choose Export Data to Another App.
- Select entries and tap Continue.
- Acknowledge the truth of what Apple tells you about exporting passwords and tap Continue.
- Choose an applicable app, such as Bitwarden. Tap Continue.
- Apple alerts you that these password entries will be exported to the third-party password manager. Tap Continue in “App Name.”
- In that app, follow the steps to complete. In Bitwarden, you tap Continue to import the entries.
I would have shown you Tahoe, instead, because it has better selection tools for choosing entries first; then you export them. However, there is a bug either in Tahoe or Bitwarden, as I cannot get the app to appear as a choice. Here are the steps, nonetheless, for when this works in the near future:
- Launch Passwords.
- Select entries with passkeys (or other passwords) to export.
- Choose Export Selected Item to App.
- Authenticate with Touch ID or your account password. (iOS and iPadOS don’t prompt you for this authentication.)
- Select a Destination app and click Continue. (This is where Tahoe fails me.)
- Confirm the export by clicking Continue in “App Name.”
- Complete the import in the other password manager.
This process copies the passkey without moving it. Passkeys don’t need to be refreshed, since only your devices possess and sync the private keys required for your part of the authentication. Unless your equipment was compromised, the passkey could last forever.
Update: Unfortunately, I initially answered the question at the head of this question incorrectly. I had a false memory of receiving a prompt to create a passkey for my Apple Account; that is not how it works. For now and possibly forever, Apple Account passkeys are locked to devices and cannot be exported. Thanks to an alert reader for pointing this out!
Update: Dashlane and Bitwarden now both support passkey export. Still no update from 1Password.
[Got a question for the column? You can email glenn@sixcolors.com or use /glenn in our subscriber-only Discord community.]
- Did you know members have a direct feed into my brain…er, question queue? See the bottom of this post. ↩
- Because this is a device-based key, it is stored in Secure Enclave, making portability impossible. Apple may never allow third parties to manage an Apple Account passkey. ↩
- On sites that allow multiple passkeys, it can be as easy as clicking another plus sign and choosing the correct password manager to store the second key. ↩
- These features are based on standards, although Apple is the first to adopt them as far as I can tell. Eventually, other browser makers, password managers, and operating systems should adopt them, and you will be able to have this experience on any device and in any ecosystem. ↩
- Apple developer Ricky Mondello also noted on August 18, probably in response to my column, that this feature was coming. ↩
- Apple has not yet included this information in iOS 26, iPadOS 26, or Tahoe support pages. ↩
[Glenn Fleishman is a printing and comics historian, Jeopardy champion, and serial Kickstarterer. His latest books are Six Centuries of Type & Printing (Aperiodical LLC) and How Comics Are Made (Andrews McMeel Publishing).]
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