For years, we’ve been promised a future without passwords. A digital world where we no longer have to invent, remember, and inevitably reset combinations of capital letters, numbers, and special characters. That future is being built on a technology called passkeys, and Microsoft Edge is finally starting to treat them as a first-class citizen.

In a significant, if overdue, update, Microsoft’s Edge browser can now create, save, and—most importantly—sync passkeys using its built-in password manager. It’s a move that fixes a massive headache for Edge users and signals another major browser getting serious about our passwordless future.

But as with many version 1.0 features, the excitement comes with a few heavy asterisks.

The problem Edge just solved

First, it’s important to understand what passkeys are and why this update matters. Think of a passkey as a digital key, split into two parts. One part, the public key, is stored by the website or app you’re logging into. The other part, the private key, is stored securely on your device—your phone, your laptop, or in a password manager.

When you log in, the website presents a challenge, and your device uses its private key to sign it, proving it’s you. You authorize this with a simple, familiar action: your fingerprint, facial recognition, or your device’s PIN. It’s faster, easier, and dramatically more secure than a password. It’s impossible to phish, as the key only works for the legitimate site it was created for.

This is all part of the Fast IDentity Online 2 (FIDO2) open standard, which has the backing of every major player: Apple, Google, Amazon, and a rapidly growing list of banks, retailers, and services.

Until this update, however, Microsoft Edge had a glaring, almost fatal flaw in its passkey strategy. While you could create a passkey, it was often “device-bound.” This meant a passkey created on your Windows desktop was locked to that specific machine’s security chip. If you grabbed your Windows laptop to log in to the same site, that passkey wasn’t there. You’d have to create a new one, or worse, fall back on the very password you were trying to escape. This single-handedly defeated the convenience that passkeys are meant to provide.

This new update fixes that. Passkeys created in Edge are now saved to the Microsoft Password Manager, which is tied to your Microsoft account. They are stored encrypted in the cloud and follow you from one Windows PC to another.

How the new system works

For users, the experience is straightforward. When you visit a site that supports passkeys (like Google, eBay, or PayPal), Edge will ask if you’d like to create one in the Microsoft Password Manager.

The first time you do this, you’ll be prompted to set up a “Microsoft Password Manager PIN.” This PIN acts as a secondary layer of protection for your passkey vault. When you want to use that passkey on a new Windows PC, you’ll need to enter this PIN to verify your identity before your passkeys become available. On your primary device, you’ll just use your usual Windows Hello authentication—a quick fingerprint scan, facial recognition, or your device PIN—to log in.

The Edge team also noted that a Microsoft Password Manager plugin is “coming soon,” which will allow Windows users to use their passkeys in other applications, not just within the Edge browser itself.

The catch: still stuck in the Windows

Ecosystem.

This is where the good news hits a wall. While Microsoft has fixed the problem of syncing between Windows PCs, it’s still far behind the competition in building a truly universal solution.

The two biggest limitations are glaring:

1. It’s Windows-only: The new sync capability is currently exclusive to Windows PCs. If you use an iPhone, an Android-based Samsung, or a MacBook, your Edge passkeys are useless on those devices. In a world where most people use a phone and a computer, this is a major gap.
2. No work account support: This feature is only for personal Microsoft Accounts. If you use Edge for your job or school, your Microsoft Entra account (formerly Azure AD) is not supported for passkey syncing at this time.

This is a tough pill to swallow when you look at the competition. Google Chrome, for instance, rolled out passkey syncing through the Google Password Manager over a year ago, allowing passkeys to move seamlessly between Windows, Android, macOS, and ChromeOS. Apple’s iCloud Keychain does the same across its ecosystem of iPhones, iPads, and Macs.

This is precisely why, even with this welcome update, many security experts and tech-savvy users will still be “better served by a third-party password manager.”

Dedicated managers like 1Password, Bitwarden, and Proton Pass were built from the ground up to be platform-agnostic. They have spent years perfecting the art of securely syncing credentials—including passkeys—across every device and operating system you can think of. They don’t care if you use a Windows PC at work, a MacBook at home, and an Android phone on the go. Your passkeys are simply there.

For the user who lives exclusively within the Windows ecosystem—perhaps using a Windows desktop, a Windows laptop, and a (now-discontinued) Surface Duo—this update is fantastic. For everyone else, it’s a sign of progress, but it’s not yet a reason to ditch your dedicated password manager. Microsoft is on the right path, but it’s still playing catch-up in the race to kill the password.