On this episode of The Vergecast, we figure out passkeys once and for all.

Passkeys: how do they work? No, like, seriously. It’s clear that the industry is increasingly betting on passkeys as a replacement for passwords, a way to use the internet that is both more secure and more user-friendly. But for all that upside, it’s not always clear how we, the normal human users, are supposed to use passkeys. You’re telling me it’s just a thing… that lives on my phone? What if I lose my phone? What if you steal my phone?

  • @[email protected]English
    39•9 months ago

    You can use Bitwarden to store passkeys. Not sure if the self hosted solution has support for it yet though.

    • @[email protected]English
      23•9 months ago

      I must admit that, despite reading about passkeys a bit, I still don’t understand the actual practicalities. I seem to recall that Bitwarden can store keys, but can’t generate them. If that’s true, who generates the passkey?

      • @[email protected]English
        22•9 months ago

        Bitwarden can both generate and store them in the browser extension. It can also use them through the browser extension but it can’t yet use them through the mobile apps (they’re working on it).

        • @[email protected]English
          2•9 months ago

          Bitwarden pro right? ($10 for the year, totally worth it). My mobile app can create/use them already too.

          • @[email protected]English
            5•9 months ago

            Don’t need the premium version of Bitwarden to use passkeys. The free version works.

            That said, $10 per year is not a big cost to support the company storing your vault and developing the apps.

    • TheOneCurlyEnglish
      10•9 months ago

      Vaultwarden does at least, I’ve been using it with passkeys for the last couple months and it’s been great.

    • Carlos SolísEnglish
      2•9 months ago

      VaultWarden user here - yes you can now use your own self-hosted server to store passkeys and that’s a gigantic game-changer. Just install the BitWarden add-on on a recent version of Firefox and voilà

    • @[email protected]English
      2•9 months ago

      2024.1.2 released with self-hosted server passkey support.

      TBH though I would not trust myself to self host my keys to my digital life when the alternative is $40/year for the whole family. You may have a different perspective though.

      • Carlos SolísEnglish
        2•9 months ago

        You can just use something like YunoHost, and synchronize weekly encrypted backups via Nextcloud or Syncthing to all of your computers. That way, if your server ends up busted for whatever reason, you can just restore it elsewhere and go back to business