In addition to a big applause for the iPad Calculator app at Apple's WWDC 2024 keynote, the crowd also seemed very happy with the debut of Passwords. It's an appropriately named app that takes iCloud Keychain's popular password manager feature and gives it a home outside of Settings.
Passwords is a dedicated app for Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Vision Pro that securely stores logins and passwords in an encrypted location that must be authenticated with Face ID, Touch ID, or a password to open. It's still free to use and considering it's a dedicated app, it's now a real competitor to Lastpass and 1Password.
While some have thought that you may be forced to use it only with Safari (after all, it is made by Apple and Safari is Apple's browser), we have good news.
A browser extension saves the day
Apple Passwords will work with third-party browsers (Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge) through a browser extension. It is actually the iCloud extension, which currently also allows iCloud Keychain users to have the autofill experience. This way, even if your preferred browser isn't Safari, you'll still be able to use Apple Passwords autofill.
In a demo, I was able to see the app's interface in action; Like other password managers, you can view a complete alphabetical list of all your logins or view it broken down categorically. Again, Passwords also hosts Wi-Fi networks, which is very useful, and the app supports passkeys and 2FA codes. For the latter, you can even import a library of 2FA codes from a different service like Google Authenticator.
You can also create a shared group, which could be useful for sharing, say, streaming service logins with family. Instead of having to be present to copy and paste individually, you can share your collection of logins. It all seems pretty useful, but to make accessing stored passwords even easier, Apple also created a menu bar experience for passwords.
This basically allows the app icon (a single key placed vertically) to sit at the top of your Mac. When you need a username or account password in a jiffy, click on it and authenticate. You can scroll or search for a specific login to quickly copy and paste it. Good looking. Logging in from here or using autofill happened quickly.
Much like the current experience with iCloud Keychain or another password manager, it will warn you about passwords that have been reused, compromised, or even leaked and suggest changing them.
Perhaps best of all, your logins will sync across your Apple devices through the Passwords app for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS, but they can also be accessed on Windows via the web. Oh, and of course, when Passwords launches later in 2024, it will be free; You will only need an Apple account.
