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Comment by trollbridge | Hacker News Reader

Bitwarden is the one vendor that doesn’t do lock in (since you can export your passkeys). Which also means you can back them up.

The rest of the platforms give you zero ability to export or back up your passkeys, which makes them worse than useless.

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Apple also announced passkey import and export is coming this fall with iOS 26 (and their other OSes): https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2025/279/

> We'll explore key updates including [...] and the secure import/export of passkeys

Have they shared any details about if this is actually cross-provider/platform import/export? I feel like if Apple doesn't outright share those details, they're talking about import/export within the Apple ecosystem.

No, in this case it is actually an industry standard: https://fidoalliance.org/specifications-credential-exchange-...

Nothing of the info Apple published so far seems to indicate that they'll implement that. And again, based on the track record of Apple, feels unlikely they won't implement something on their own.

From the video cited upthread: "This transfer uses a data schema that was built in collaboration with the members of the FIDO Alliance. It standardizes the data format for passkeys, passwords, verification codes, and more data types"

I worked on this standard and we’re all excited that it’s rolling out to most of not all password managers and platforms.

Let’s see — Apples track record of interoperability isn’t great unless dragged by regulatory bodies. Managing private emails at scale to migrate away from Apple for instance is wildly painful.

There is an industry standard being deployed for passkey (and other credential) import/export so that everything will work together seamlessly. Most players are waiting for that so there aren’t N different formats floating around that only work with subsets of other PW managers, which is a real problem now.

I'll believe it when I see it. So far I'm with the "Passkeys are for vendor lock-in" crowd and keeping my distance from them.

Apple already implemented Import/Export according to FIDO standard in their iOS 26: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2025/279/?time=1...

Standards themselves:

https://fidoalliance.org/specs/cx/cxf-v1.0-rd-20250313.html

https://fidoalliance.org/specs/cx/cxp-v1.0-wd-20241003.html

I tried finding anything in the transcript that mentions that import/export explicitly will be the open standards, but they seem to mention "FIDO" and import/export in different contexts, not together.

Maybe I missed something?

These drafts both look reasonable. I wasn't aware they'd progressed beyond vaporware and I'm pleasantly surprised.

re Bitwarden Passkeys export/import, I found this:

> Q: Are stored passkeys included in Bitwarden imports and exports?

> A: Passkeys are included in .json exports from Bitwarden. The ability to transfer your passkeys to or from another passkey provider is planned for a future release.

https://bitwarden.com/help/storing-passkeys/#passkey-managem...

But I'm not sure I understand the last part, how is the "ability to transfer your passkeys to another passkey provider" planned for a future Bitwarden release, if the Passkeys are already included in the export data? Wouldn't that be up to other Passkey providers to implement the import? Or is the export data not complete enough for an import?

Yes, other providers could theoretically import Bitwarden’s proprietary format. Bitwarden’s reference to a future release is regarding the standardized import/export of passkeys that is in development: https://fidoalliance.org/fido-alliance-publishes-new-specifi...

I work at bitwarden and I can confirm this. While technically you have the data, any other app need to support our json format (which they totally can, our code is open source) - but CXP (the standard) is happening this year so we’re planning on using it.

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