For many of this 12 months, Microsoft has been warning customers that they may now not be capable of use its Authenticator cell software for consumer ID and password administration. As reported by CNET on July 29, 2025, “In June, the corporate stopped letting customers add passwords to Authenticator…. And beginning Aug. 1, you may now not be capable of use saved passwords.”
Additionally: How passkeys work: The complete guide to your inevitable passwordless future
To me, the dire warnings of this pending doomsday-like deadline are paying homage to the run-up to January 1, 2000 — the so-called “Y2K downside” — when it was anticipated that computer systems in all places would expertise a meltdown as a result of their programmers by no means thought of the chance that their software program would nonetheless be in use within the twenty first century.
The nice passkey migration
However most of this reporting overlooks the larger shift that is underway throughout Microsoft’s identification administration portfolio and, in lots of circumstances, is lacking key particulars concerning the future roles of Microsoft Authenticator and the Microsoft Edge browser in relation to one other colossal shift that is at the moment in progress: the world’s transition from passwords to passkey.
A passkey is unequivocally a safer credential than a password in relation to logging into web sites and apps. Passkeys can’t be guessed, the identical passkey can’t be reused throughout totally different web sites and apps, and also you can’t be tricked into divulging your passkeys to malicious actors by means of methods resembling phishing, smishing, squishing, and malvertising. Even should you’re strengthening consumer IDs and passwords with extra components of authentication, passkeys are a greater and safer various.
Additionally: I replaced my Microsoft account password with a passkey – and you should, too
In actual fact, of the most important know-how distributors which can be encouraging end-users to modify to passkeys, no vendor is pushing customers to transition as exhausting as Microsoft is. However, on the similar time that Microsoft is aggressively campaigning for that transition, we’re nonetheless ready for Microsoft to supply the excellent credential administration capabilities which can be essential to help that future.
Managing passwords after Authenticator
For customers who managed their consumer IDs and passwords with Authenticator and wish to stick with Microsoft-based options to handle their consumer IDs and passwords, their solely possibility is to export their passwords from Microsoft Authenticator to Microsoft’s Edge net browser. As soon as customers do that, Edge is not going to solely take over the position of managing these consumer IDs and passwords, it should additionally deal with the auto-provisioning of these credentials (a.ok.a. autofill) on the time of login and the synchronization of these credentials to the consumer’s different copies of Edge.
Along with Home windows, Edge is obtainable on MacOS, iOS, Android, and Linux. Given Edge’s cross-platform attain when in comparison with that of Microsoft Authenticator (iOS and Android), it makes extra sense for Edge to deal with credential administration and autofill.
This strategy, the place Microsoft is facilitating credential administration by means of the browser as a substitute of a cell software intently resembles the way in which Google is dealing with credential administration and autofill by means of its Chrome browser. Each browsers are primarily based on Chromium and provide customers some primary password administration capabilities, and each depend on a central cloud to deal with credential synchronization to the identical browser on different units.
The issue with non-syncable passkeys
However, on the time this text was revealed, whereas Chrome’s password administration capabilities will auto-provision and synchronize credentials of each varieties (passwords and passkeys) to a consumer’s different installations of Chrome, Edge can solely synchronize passwords. In response to a Microsoft spokesperson who was interviewed for this story, “passkeys created for providers like PayPal and eBay are saved as device-bound credentials in Home windows and will be accessed by way of Home windows Settings > Accounts > Passkeys. These are usually not saved or synced in Edge.”
In different phrases, Edge for Home windows is able to dealing with and auto-provisioning passkeys throughout a login, however not the opposite variations of Edge. I confirmed this by making an attempt to make use of Edge for Android to register a passkey for eBay. Rather a lot occurs behind the scenes once you register a passkey for the primary time, and I clarify the method in How Passkeys Work: Let’s Start the Registration Process.
Additionally: 10 passkey survival tips: Prepare for your passwordless future now
Whereas an eBay passkey registration possibility exists when utilizing Edge for Home windows, no such possibility was obtainable to me on Edge for Android. Along with that limitation, the eBay passkey that I used to be capable of set up on Edge for Home windows couldn’t be synchronized to my copy of Edge for Android. This confirmed the spokesperson’s assertion about passkeys being “saved as device-bound credentials in Home windows.” Machine-bound passkeys are additionally known as “non-syncable passkeys.” They’re tied to the gadget that was used to create them and can’t be synchronized to a different gadget. Because it seems, the passkey that I established by means of Edge operating on my copy of Home windows 11 was sure by way of Home windows Howdy to the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) in my HP Pocket book.
This raises the query of the place, throughout Microsoft’s portfolio, customers would possibly be capable of discover help for syncable passkeys since they’re by far essentially the most handy type of passkey to make use of for the web sites and apps that help them. In spite of everything, the corporate is already supporting syncable consumer IDs and passwords by means of Edge. The very last thing most customers wish to do is handle a number of device-bound passkeys for every web site and app they use. Higher to simply have one, identical to a password.
Your passkey administration choices now
That is the place the confusion units in. Throughout a lot of the articles that reported on the elimination of consumer ID and password help in Microsoft Authenticator, the authors additionally famous that Authenticator would proceed to help passkeys and that the consumer may proceed to depend on Authenticator to authenticate (login) with these passkeys (see my rationalization of what really happens during your ‘passwordless’ passkey login). It isn’t shocking that a lot of the articles stated this. In spite of everything, Microsoft’s own post about the changes to Authenticator very clearly states, “Authenticator will proceed to help passkeys. You probably have arrange Passkeys to your Microsoft Account, be sure that Authenticator stays enabled as your Passkey Supplier. Disabling Authenticator will disable your passkeys.”
This definitely piqued my curiosity. On the floor, it was unusually beginning to appear like Microsoft was transferring all consumer ID and password administration to Edge whereas on the similar time fracturing passkey administration throughout Microsoft Authenticator and Edge for Home windows as a substitute of transferring full help for each syncable passwords and syncable passkeys to Edge (which is precisely how Chrome does it). So I went again to Microsoft to guarantee that I understood issues accurately. I apparently did not.
Additionally: Passkeys won’t be ready for primetime until Google and other companies fix this
“Authenticator will all the time proceed to help device-bound passkeys for Entra accounts,” a Microsoft spokesperson advised me. “You will all the time be capable of create a kind of at this time and sooner or later.” There’s rather a lot to unpack there. Not solely are Authenticator-managed passkeys additionally device-bound passkeys (in different phrases, they can’t be synchronized), the passkey help present in Authenticator is for customers of Microsoft Entra ID, Microsoft’s cloud-based identification administration resolution (previously referred to as Azure Energetic Listing) for companies. In different phrases, the passkey help present in Microsoft Authenticator is just not for these of us within the basic consumer inhabitants who simply wish to handle their credentials. And it nonetheless lacks any synchronization capabilities.
In a nutshell, for these of us within the basic consumer inhabitants who wish to handle and use passkeys along with consumer IDs and passwords, Microsoft presents one possibility: Edge on Home windows. Moreover, neither Edge for Home windows nor Microsoft Authenticator (for Entra ID customers) presents passkey synchronization. The one sort of passkeys that Microsoft at the moment helps are device-bound (non-syncable) passkeys. That is clearly not ultimate, and realizing a number of the people at Microsoft, I am certain they’d agree (particularly given how exhausting the corporate is promoting the concept of passkeys proper now).
My conclusion as I attempt to take a 30,000-foot view of this case is that in relation to all the totally different Microsoft applied sciences that play a task in credential administration — Home windows, Home windows Howdy, Authenticator, Edge, Microsoft Pockets, Entra ID, passkeys, and so forth. — the corporate has a variety of totally different items on the chessboard. Shifting all of them into the best place to help the safe credential administration future it’s promoting is simpler stated than completed.
Additionally: What really happens during your ‘passwordless’ passkey login?
In the identical method {that a} chess participant (and opponent) all the time assume and anticipate a couple of strikes forward, it is exhausting to not see that sooner or later, ultimately (most likely sooner), Microsoft will help syncable passkeys throughout all its variations of Edge identical to it does now with consumer IDs and passwords (and identical to Chrome does). That’s the solely logical consequence given its strongly worded messages emigrate passwords from Authenticator to Edge.
However till that last chess transfer occurs, customers have choices within the different credential administration corporations, together with Google and all of the third-party password managers (1Password, BitWarden, Dashlane, LastPass, NordPass, and so forth.) that help syncable passkeys and passwords in a single resolution.
Keep forward of safety information with Tech Today, delivered to your inbox each morning.
