Microsoft just made passkeys even easier to use in Windows 11

After some major blunders over the years, Microsoft has clearly been focusing more and more on security. Just this year, the company has plugged hundreds of security vulnerabilities across their various software and service offerings.

But Microsoft isn’t just focused on security flaws. They’re also pushing for better security practices, like biometric security via Windows Hello and the use of passkeys over traditional passwords (which Microsoft finally enabled for consumer accounts this year).

Now, Microsoft has announced that Windows 11 will also support third-party passkeys for even greater overall security.

In a Windows Developer blog post yesterday, Microsoft wrote that they’ve updated the Windows 11 API to support third-party passkeys and is currently collaborating with 1Password and Bitwarden — among others — to get them better integrated into Windows.

As part of this update, Microsoft has also redesigned the Windows Hello experience so that it’s easier to use. Now, whenever you navigate to a website that supports passkeys, you’ll be asked how you want to save the passkey (whether to your Microsoft account or elsewhere).

We expect to hear more security news from Microsoft during the Authenticate conference that takes place between October 14 to 16.

Further reading: Why you should ditch passwords for passkeys