A major passkey limitation in Google Password Manager may disappear soon

While passkeys hold the promise to replace passwords and tighten the security of your accounts, critics often argue that the lack of an import or export feature, coupled with other issues, acts as a major roadblock to someone’s passwordless journey. Time will tell whether passkeys replace passwords fully, but Google has started laying the groundwork to remove one of passkeys’ biggest limitations.

In an APK teardown of Google Play Services 25.13.31 beta conducted by Android Authority, there are clear signs that suggest Google is working on import/export tools for Google Password Manager. That’s not surprising, given that major password managers, including Google Password Manager, follow FIDO’s passkey standard, which announced the specification for the passkey import/export feature last year.

What does passkey import/export mean for Google Password Manager users?

Since passkeys are tied to your device, many people believed that it wouldn’t be possible to import or export them — until, of course, FIDO’s export specifications were revealed last year. The support for export capability alone solves many limitations of the passkey, other than the obvious one of giving you the freedom to switch platforms without much hassle.

In addition to doing away with the passkeys’ restrictive nature, the export capability potentially reduces the risk of losing your account when the device is stolen by allowing you to back up passkeys and restore them when needed. That effectively means if you have passkeys in Google Password Manager, you should be able to export them to another service like iCloud Keychain for a smoother transition from Android to iPhone and vice versa when Apple starts offering similar export tools.

The code snippet in the APK teardown also suggests that Google is conscious of how bad actors can take advantage of the export tool and trick users into leaking the passkey chain. In that case, as the code snippet suggests, Google will block the export of passkeys, with a warning that the application you’re trying to export doesn’t follow the best security practices:

Export blocked for your protection
The password manager you’re trying to export to doesn’t follow best practices

Unfortunately, the APK teardown doesn’t give away details related to when Google plans to introduce the feature to Google Password Manager. While Google is the first major tech company that’s now publicly known to be working on the passkey export feature for its password manager application, whether it’ll be the first to launch it – and win people over who quit using Google Password Manager – remains to be seen.