Hacker News Reader

Comment by makeitdouble | Hacker News Reader

Nothing wrong with your answer itself, but having to be Apple or Google is a PITA. These account are ultra critical already and you will want maximum security to access them.

This means if you go on a trip somewhere you absolutely need two devices. If you kill your phone and want to buy another one ASAP, you wont be able to do anything with the new device until you can convince the platform it's you. With passkeys you're just SOL. Imagining if you needed a phone to get back from your trip - e.g. etickets, auth needed etc. - it becomes a nightmare scenario.

A third party manager makes it easier, but it's a lot less usable that the first party ones.

Reasonable people make different life choice, having to constantly think about backup strategies whenever I'm away from home would be so stress inducing to me.

View on HN

  > With passkeys you're just SOL.

No more so than if you lose access to the device that's required for Google/Apple MFA prompts, neither of which use SMS and depend on a proprietary approval flow.

If you lose your phone in 2026 while on a trip to Italy and try to enter your Gmail user/pass from your wallet, there's about a 100.00% chance you'll hit a "let's verify you're you" gate, that's been the case for 5+ years.

With passkeys I'm not stuck clicking Yes in the Gmail app or typing in the numbers on Apple hardware, I can skip the Apple/Google specific MFA nonsense and keep the passkeys in Bitwarden where they sync seamlessly between devices.

It feels truly liberating being able to skip MFA everywhere and login with 1 click, like a throwback to the golden age of using a password manager in 2010. Before passkeys it started to feel like I was spending 5% of my waking hours every day copying 6 digit codes from phone/email/TOTP after twiddling my thumbs for 15-30 seconds.

>This means if you go on a trip somewhere you absolutely need two devices

If you want multi-device redundancy, you have to carry a second device of some type, it's hard to get around that. I almost always travel with an iPad in addition to my phone, so I have a second device.

In addition, my wife (who travels with me so if my iPhone is stolen, hers might be too) is one of my Apple account recovery contacts, plus I've set my sister as an addtional recovery contact, so even if I'm out of the country and I have to activate a new iPhone, I can call her to help with the recovery. So all I have to do is find an Apple store and buy a new phone.

I also carry a USB key tucked into my luggage with the recovery kit (encrypted) for 1Password so I can activate 1Password on any new device and have access to my passwords and whatever passkeys I don't have in iCloud.

I just don't use Google or Apple accounts for everything. I don't want my whole life in the hands of some big tech deciding how I should prove to them that I'm me.

I did use Microsoft 365 (business version) for my email but they also decided I should use their MFA app so I left. I did have my yubikey as second factor but they keep pushing their stupid authenticator app.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com