1Password adds passkey support for Android

Passkey availability has been on the rise and is only continuing to grow. The latest example comes from 1Password, the aptly named password manager, which has announced support for passkeys on Android devices. Now, anyone using a phone or tablet with Android 14 or higher can access 1Passwords’s passkeys right on their device’s apps. Last September, the company made passkeys available on iOS 17 and iPadOS 17 devices, along with browsers such as Chrome and Safari.

So, what is a passkey anyway? Unlike a password that someone can guess or potentially obtain in a hack, passkeys consist of public and private keys. The public key belongs to whatever site an account is made with, while the private key exists solely on the device and is never seen by the involved company. Basically, it works as a puzzle of sorts, and instead of typing in a password, it uses an API to connect the private and public keys.

Users will need to download the 1Password app and, when creating new accounts, choose to make one with a passkey instead of a password. To clarify, this function is currently only available for Android apps, not Chrome for Android. According to 1Password, Google is in the midst of building a new API that will allow for passkeys on mobile Chrome.