Passkeys are pretty great. The tech is solid, based on well-established, secure cryptographic principles, and the ease of use is through the roof compared to remembering traditional passwords. In case you are not in the know, the passkey paradigm has you generating a secure private key that you keep locally on your device and a corresponding public key that you give out to websites/services/apps you want to log into. Once you actually want to log in, all you need to do is authenticate on your device securely through something like a biometric lock (fingerprint, Face ID) to “prove” that you own a certain public key. A gross oversimplification, but as long as modern cryptography standards hold, it is a glorious alternative to remembering and typing in passwords.
There is a potential catch, though – what if you change the device your private key is stored on, like your phone breaks or you just get a new one? There has to be a convenient and secure way to transfer that private key instead of having to generate a new pair and send out the public key again all over the place. Indeed, there is. It is called the Credential Exchange Protocol (CXP), and it is a developing industry standard championed by the FIDO Alliance.
If you use an iOS 26 or macOS 26 device or one of the bigger password managers out there, notably Bitwarden and 1Password, then you already have access to CXP and passkey migration from one device to another. Despite being among the CXP backers, Google has yet to officially implement CXP into Google Password Manager and, by extension, Android itself.
Google Password Manager passkey migration
Well, our colleagues over at Android Authority managed to activate a still hidden interface within Google Password Manager that allows both importing and exporting passkeys. This is important since on Android devices, CXP transfer relies on Google Play Services and the Google Password Manager to actually shuffle keys between providers. So, this proves that the required groundwork is already there. In all likelihood, you will start to see passkey migration options not only in Google Password Manager but also in other managers that run on Android and support passkeys, like Samsung’s Samsung Pass.
If you still find yourself struggling with traditional password management, now seems like a good time to start exploring migrating to passkeys where they are supported.