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A
AgingKeeper
April 2, 2025
Question

Issues saving and signing in with passkeys on the Mac

  • April 2, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 926 views

Hi,

With 1Password having added Passkeys I decided to see if they are useful.  I now have several accounts that have passkeys.

Several times over the past couple of days I have been in a situation where an app or a website in my browser requires that I log in using a passkey.  However 1Password is not detecting the request and as a result there is no way I have found so far that I can tell 1Password to use my passkey to sign in. 

A key "feature" of 1Password's use of an app and a "paired" extension in web browsers has been that when the extension is not working properly or when I am logging into a standalone app I can always open the app and copy and paste my credentials into my browser or into the app.  My inability to use my passkey is breaking 1Password for me.  

In addition when I have generated passkeys I am finding that the 1Password stores it in its own login item and not with the credentials I used to use for the site.  I may be wrong but I am not sure it even asks if I want to upddate an existing login.  Once done there is no way for me to merge the username, passwords and 2FA codes also associated with the same account together.  So now I have duplicates that will take me time to merge.  

Also good luck finding the items with passkeys if you are trying to figure all of this out.

I understand the potential security benefits of passkeys but using them in 1Password so far has me baffled.  What am I missing?  

    2 replies

    J
    jeo4long
    April 3, 2025

    Pretty much same experience. The only time passkey works for me if I use the same device (laptop in my case) and the same browser.  Then the 1password browser extension will remember and recognized that passkey is set for that website.  However, as soon as I try to use it with my other devices including mobile, it doesn't work. I end up setup my passkey with my apple password instead (I am Mac user).

      1P_Dave
      1P_Dave
      1Password Employee
      April 3, 2025

      Hello @AgingKeeper and @jeo4long! 👋

      I'm sorry that you're both running into issues when saving passkeys in 1Password. So that I can determine whether you're running into a known issue can you tell me the following: 

      1. Which browser(s) are you using?
      2. Are the websites that you're saving passkeys for listed on https://passkeys.directory/? Can you share some examples of the websites that you're run into trouble with? 

      In addition when I have generated passkeys I am finding that the 1Password stores it in its own login item and not with the credentials I used to use for the site.  I may be wrong but I am not sure it even asks if I want to upddate an existing login. 

      1Password in the browser will ask you if you'd like to update your existing login item with the passkey or save a new login item: 


      Are you not seeing this prompt when saving a passkey in your browser on your Mac? You can find our guide on how to save a passkey here: Save and sign in with passkeys in your browser

      -Dave

      J
      jeo4long
      April 4, 2025

      Hi Dave, I have better luck with my mac laptop.  My problem mostly trying to use the passkey with my mobile devices and tablets.   I have an iPhone, iPad and Android phones and tablets.   My general questions is how do you force the browser or device to use passkey stored in 1password?   For browser, a lot of time (even though 1password is installed), when a website asked for passkey (for example, google login), then it gives me message to use "phone" instead of using the 1password.

      1P_Dave
      1P_Dave
      1Password Employee
      April 4, 2025

      @jeo4long 

      Thank you for the reply. You'll want to make sure that you've set 1Password as the passkey provider for autofill on both your iOS and Android devices: 


      Once you've followed those steps on all of your devices, let me know if you still see an issue. If you do then please tell me what you see on your screen when you try to sign in to your Google account using a passkey and tell me which browser and device you see the issue on. 

      -Dave

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