Overview of Passwords, the password manager finally independent of iOS 18 and macOS 15

Apple has finally heard our requests: a real application is available to manage private data in the iCloud keychain! This application, simply named “Passwords”, is integrated by default into macOS Sequoia, iOS and iPadOS 18 as well as visionOS 2. It allows you to manage usernames and passwords for websites without having to go through Settings of each device.

After adding password sharing last year, this is a welcome new development for the iCloud keychain, which thus approaches its many competitors and becomes an even more serious candidate against 1Password, Bitwarden and all the others.

With sharing, can iOS 17 Keychain replace a password manager?

How does Passwords work and what are its additional new features? Follow the leader.

An independent app instead of a Settings section

Passwords now takes the form of an app that is automatically added to the home screen of your iPhone or iPad, but not in the macOS Sequoia Dock. You will also find it through Spotlight, the App Library on mobile devices or even Launchpad on Macs. It replaces the Settings and System Settings section which was previously dedicated to the iCloud keychain.

Since there is now an independent app, the Settings have also been purged from this old section. Apple has still thought of the most distracted, with a reminder which appears in particular when you search for “Passwords” in the System Settings of macOS 15. Oddly, this reminder does not appear in the first beta of iOS 18, perhaps an oversight.

Speaking of reminder, you could also access the iCloud keychain from Safari preferences on the Mac. This is no longer the case with Sequoia, even if Apple’s web browser still continues to display a panel dedicated to passwords in its settings. Inside, there’s nothing more than a reminder message and a button to open the Passwords app.

That said, what does the Passwords app look like? No major surprise, it is an app coded in Swift and SwiftUI like all modern Apple apps and it adopts a classic presentation. She especially mentioned the Reminders app to me, perhaps because there are now categories displayed large and with colored icons on the main screen of iOS and in the sidebar of iPadOS and macOS.

On iPhone, we first display a screen with these categories at the top, then access to sharing groups at the bottom. A search field completes everything at the top of the interface, but the list of identifiers itself is no longer accessible from the start, you have to open the “All” category or another to find them. On iPad, Vision Pro or Mac, we have a sidebar on the left with categories then groups and the area on the right to display the corresponding content. By default, the list of all identifiers is displayed when opened.

Apple has provided six categories in Passwords:

This article is reserved for members of the iGen Club

This article is reserved for members of the iGen Club!

This article is reserved for members of the iGen Club

This article is reserved for members of the iGen Club