1Password passkeys functionality will launch next year, but to help people understand the benefits and prepare for a world without passwords, the company has put together an interactive demo.

Although the company used for the demo is fictitious, you will create a real passkey which will be saved to your 1Password account …

What are passkeys?

Currently, to log in to a website or app, we usually enter a username and a password. We’ve been arguing for years that passwords are a pretty horrible approach to security – and getting even more so with each additional service we use. Security questions as a crude form of two-factor authentication is an even bigger mess.

Passkeys instead allow our device to authenticate us. The logic is this (using an iPhone with Face ID as an example):

  • A website or app asks you to identify yourself, and prove your identity.
  • Your iPhone receives that request, and activates Face ID.
  • If your face matches, your iPhone tells the website who you are,and that it has confirmed your identity.

At no point is there a password involved: Authentication is performed on your device, not on the website server. The web server trusts your iPhone to authenticate you in exactly the same way that payment terminals trust your phone for Apple Pay transactions.

The standard for passkeys was developed by an industry body known as the FIDO Alliance, but each company to support the standard is free to use its own label. Apple brands this feature Passkeys in iCloud Keychain, and 1Password calls its implementation Universal Sign On.

1Password passkeys demo

1Password promises passkeys support in early 2023, and in the meantime is providing a sneak preview of how it will work, via an interactive demo. Note that the demo currently only works in Chrome, but the company says that Safari and Firefox support is coming soon.

Not usually using Chrome for 1Password, and not having the browser extension installed, getting access to the demo was a slightly fiddly process, but it did then work, and added the passkey to my vault.

It may take time for your favorite websites and services to implement support for passkeys, but we want you to get a glimpse now. We’ll be rolling this functionality out to every 1Password customer in early 2023, but in the meantime we’re thrilled to unveil a live, interactive demo and walkthrough of passkeys in 1Password!

To help showcase how passkeys can transform your sign-in experience, the demo site also includes an explainer video with everything you need to know. We walk you through what passkeys are, why it’s so important passwordless technology remains open and interoperable, and exactly what using passkeys in 1Password will look like.

If you don’t want to go to that much trouble, there’s a video demo, too. The video actually provides a better demo anyway, as it shows the whole login process. As you go to login to a website, a notification is sent to your iPhone. You tap that, are verified with Face ID, and then tap a button to approve the login.