The Breaker Times

Among the plethora of new features ushered in with iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia, you might have spotted a brand-new app called Passwords. This is Apple’s new password manager for your iPhone, iPad, Mac, Vision Pro, and Windows PC, and it takes over from the more rudimentary password saving and syncing that was previously available via Safari and iCloud Keychain.

Before these software updates rolled out, you could find your stored passwords for apps and the web in a variety of places, depending on how you synched them. Most recently, there were Passwords entries in iOS Settings and macOS System Settings. Now, there’s a dedicated app and one that offers more than password storage.

It’s all simple to use and comprehensive, but it might not offer quite enough to replace your password manager — you don’t get the integrated ability to store documents, IDs, credit cards, and some of the other information that third-party password managers can save for you. Still, it’s a comprehensive option if you spend all your time on Apple devices. Here’s how it works.

The new Passwords app should seamlessly sweep up all the passwords you already had stored in various places during the upgrade to iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia. Just launch Passwords on your iPhone or Mac — you’ll need to verify your identity (with a password or using Face ID, for example). 

The app looks very similar on both platforms, albeit with some of the usual adjustments to fit screens of different sizes. You’ve got your passwords as before, but there are also entries for verification codes, passkeys, and Wi-Fi passwords. These were previously saved in iOS and macOS, but now they’re much more accessible.

Click or tap on any of the entries to see the full details of what’s stored, and select Edit if you want to update something manually. You can’t add tags or create private groups for passwords, but you can add notes and then run searches using the text in those notes. So, for example, you could add “important” to all the passwords you use most often.

As in earlier versions of iOS and macOS, you’ll get warnings if your passwords have been used more than once or have appeared in a data breach. To find these warnings:

• On the main page, click or tap Security.
• If a password has been compromised, you’ll find a message in red telling you that. You’ll also see listed any sites for which you’ve used passwords that could be easily guessed.
• Long-press on an entry. You can either hide the commendation or select Change Password to set a new password.
• This takes you to the website for the app or service, where you can log in and find the password settings page.

When viewing your main password list, click or tap the icon showing an up arrow or a down arrow — it’s at the top on macOS and at the bottom on iOS — to order the entries based on when they were first created or when they were last edited as well as by website or app name.

Whenever you’re logging in to an app on your iPhone or Mac or a website in Safari, you’ll get suggestions from the Passwords app as long as you have autofill turned on. To check this, head to Settings (iOS) or System Settings (macOS):

• Choose General > AutoFill & Passwords.
• Enable the AutoFill Passwords and Passkeys toggle switch.
• Turn on the Passwords toggle switch.

Adding and sharing passwords

Once you’ve checked up on your existing passwords and made sure they’re all safe and sound, you can add new ones manually by tapping on the + button in the lower-right corner (iOS) or in the toolbar at the top (macOS). Enter your login credentials, hit Done or Save, and it’s stored.

Going forward, when you try signing in to apps or websites (in Safari), you should see the Passwords app spring into action and offer to save your login credentials for you, and you can either accept or decline the offer using the dialog box that pops up.

You’ll get the same offer for passkeys, the relatively new login method being pushed by Google, Microsoft, Amazon, eBay, and many others. Essentially, you use your device’s unlock method — typically Face ID or Touch ID — to log in, instead of a password, which should be an easier and more secure method. The Passwords app won’t actually store your fingerprint or face, but it’ll keep tabs on the accounts you’ve set up with a passkey and sync this list between devices, so you’ll be met with a passkey prompt rather than a password prompt when you log in. If you need to revoke passkey access for whatever reason, you can do this by clicking or tapping Edit on the stored entry.

Finally, there’s password sharing here, too. To share a password with someone else via AirDrop, select any password stored in the app, then click the share button (the square with an arrow). To share with a group of people:

• Click the + button next to Shared Groups (macOS) or + New Group (iOS).
• Select Continue in the dialog box that explains the feature.
• Give the group a name, then choose Add People to select your contacts.
• Choose Create.
• Pick any passwords you want to share with the group.

You can add additional passwords to a group by dragging their entries on top of the group (macOS) or going to individual password pages and setting the group there (macOS and iOS). Only do this with people you absolutely trust, though. It effectively lets them use these login credentials as if they were their own.

Of course, the people you share passwords with also need Apple devices with the Passwords app on them — perhaps another reason you might want to opt for a third-party password manager instead.