One more app joins the passwordless future we’ve been promised. WhatsApp says it’s now rolling out support for passkeys in the iOS version of the app. With the feature enabled, users of Meta’s encrypted messaging app can use iPhone biometrics for login — that is, Face ID or Touch ID — or their phone’s passcode.

WhatsApp already supports unlocking its iOS app with one of these options, but this takes that a step further. Passkey support comes to the iPhone version several months after Meta started distributing it to Android WhatsApp users in October.

Passkeys are supposed to be the secure (or, at least, more secure; even passkeys have tradeoffs) wave of the future — a version of authentication that does away with passwords and SMS two-factor authentication. It also means you can sign in even when you’re not connected to a network since your phone holds the authentication key. To see if you have the feature already, WhatsApp says you’ll see the option under Settings > Account > Passkeys. Rollouts like this can take time, though, so if you don’t see it now, keep checking.

At the moment, it doesn’t appear that either the Mac desktop app or the web portal offers passkey support. Signing in either way requires using the “Linked Devices” menu and scanning a QR code using another logged-in device, which is similar to how passkeys often work when logging in to a service on a computer. Meta did not immediately respond to a request for more information.

Source: The Verge WhatsApp for iOS is rolling out passwordless logins with passkeys