What is a passkey?

A passkey is a passwordless authentication method developed by FIDO and Google in which a public key stored at the service is matched against a private key on the subject's device; the subject confirms with a biometric, a PIN or a physical device.

Because nothing secret is typed or sent, passkeys are resistant to phishing and credential reuse.

Go deeper:

• Passkey (Wikipedia) — the key pair, the authenticator and how syncing works.
• Passkeys (FIDO Alliance) — the standards body's own explanation and rollout guidance.
• WebAuthn (Wikipedia) — the W3C API that browsers use to create and use passkeys.