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> The whole _point_ of Passkeys is that they are representable as clear-text data, and so they can be synced.

That seems to be counter to everything else I've heard about it so far. If that was the case, exporting would be easy, yet many password managers have had open feature requests for some time (1y+?).

I don't know what the truth is, but if you're right, there's definitely a lot of misinformation about it. Far more than correct info IME.



You can export passkeys from Apple and MS keyrings just fine. BitWarden and 1Pass also support exporting and cross-device syncing.

What is missing is the standardized interchange format for exported passkeys.


There are or were some people pretty deep into the scene who didn't believe this was supposed to be the case.

For example,

https://github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxc/issues/10407


Migration protocols require the keys to be representable (at some point) as clear text.

And password managers like BitWarden only allow encrypted export, but the encryption key is specified by the user. So you can trivially decrypt the exported data if you want.


I don't have a dog in this race. Just showing where the other understandings come from. Your logic might lead one to conclude that migration would not then generally be available.




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