Microsoft has started rolling out passkey support for all consumers globally after they were initially enabled in Windows 11 last year.
Account holders can also now generate passkeys across Windows, Android, and iOS.
Passkeys can be created for a Microsoft account via a link, and account holders can choose their face, fingerprint, PIN, or a security key.
These passkeys are available on Windows devices, as well as Microsoft products on Apple and Google platforms.
Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Security, Compliance, and Identity, Vasu Jakkal said, “Today, you can use a passkey to sign in to Microsoft apps and websites, including Microsoft 365 and Copilot on desktop and mobile browsers.”
“Support for signing into mobile versions of Microsoft applications using your passkey will follow in the coming weeks.”
“With passkeys, instead of creating, managing, remembering, and entering passwords, you access your digital accounts the same way you unlock your device—usually with your face, fingerprint, or device PIN.”
Passkeys are a step towards Microsoft’s passwordless future. The company introduced the Windows Hello authentication with Windows 10 in 2015.
This allowed the user to sign in to a PC with their face, fingerprint, or a PIN. In April 2018, the company began supporting FIDO security keys, and in 2021, it added a fully passwordless option.
Passkeys have become the norm among industry leads, including Apple, Google, WhatsApp, Amazon, and Nintendo. Over 400 million Google accounts have used passkeys.
These passkeys replace traditional passwords, meaning a user can sign in to Gmail, PayPal, iCloud or other services by activating Face ID on their phone, a fingerprint sensor, or Windows Hello for a PC.
Two keys are generated when a user creates a passkey, one stored by the service/website of the account, and a private key stored on the device.
They also work across various devices, and many services that support passkeys will reauthenticate to a phone number or email address.
