Gone are the days of typing your entire passwords and PIN to unlock your phone or access a particular app on your phone, or remembering complex passwords in order to do so. Now, things are easier than ever with biometric login and secure authentication using passkeys. This blog will cover what passkeys are, how passkeys with Face ID and Touch ID work on your devices, and the benefits of using both together.
NOTE: FastestPass is a dedicated password manager that syncs all your complex passwords across devices without you having to remember all of them, but just one master password. Now, you can also sync your passkeys across devices to ensure seamless security across every device, especially when logging in to the apps across your smart devices.
What are Passkeys?
Passkeys are passwordless login credentials based on public‑key cryptography, created under the FIDO2/WebAuthn standards.
- A public key is stored with the website or app.
- A private key stays safely on your device and never leaves it.
When you log in, the site sends a cryptographic challenge that only your private key can answer, eliminating shared secrets like passwords that can be phished or leaked.
Passkeys replace traditional passwords with cryptographic key pairs securely stored on your devices. When you sign in, your device signs a cryptographic challenge using its private key—there’s no password to type, remember, or steal. This system works smoothly on devices equipped with biometrics, such as Face ID or Touch ID, ensuring your key is only accessible to you.
Are Passkeys and Face ID the same?
No, in short, passkeys and Face ID aren’t the same. However, Face ID can be used as a passkey. To double down on it, a passkey is an authentication mechanism that needs your Face ID or Touch ID to access a particular website or app, making it legit that it is, in fact, you who is trying to open that website or app, and no one else.
Face ID vs Passkeys: What’s the Difference?
Face ID and passkeys are not the same thing, but they work together.
- Face ID / Touch ID: biometric systems that verify that you are holding the device.
- Passkeys: the actual cryptographic credentials used to authenticate you to a website or app.
In practice, Face ID passkey authentication looks like “look at your phone, and you’re in,” but under the hood, Face ID is just unlocking the private key that completes the login.
How Passkeys Work with Face ID
Understanding how passkeys work with Face ID helps explain why the experience feels both simple and secure.
1. Registration: Creating a Passkey
When you sign up or switch an account to passkeys on iPhone or iPad:
- The app or website asks the system to create a new passkey for your account.
- iOS generates a private–public key pair and stores the private key in the Secure Enclave, tied to Face ID.
- The public key is sent to the service and saved with your account.
From that point on, your device knows, “Use this passkey when this domain asks me to sign in.”
2. Login: Face ID Unlocks the Passkey
During sign‑in, how passkeys work with Face ID follows a simple flow:
- You open the app or site and select your account; the browser or app asks the OS to use your passkey.
- Your iPhone displays the system prompt to scan your face with Face ID.
- After Face ID verifies you, iOS unlocks the private key and uses it to sign the cryptographic challenge from the service.
- The signed response proves to the service that “the same device and user are present,” and you’re logged in, without any password.
So, how passkeys use Face ID and Touch ID to authenticate is by treating biometrics as the “key to the key”: Face ID verifies the user locally, then the passkey authenticates you to the remote service.
How Passkeys Work with Touch ID
On compatible iPhone, iPad, and Mac models, how passkeys work with Touch ID is almost identical to Face ID, just with a fingerprint sensor instead of facial recognition.
1. Creating a Passkey with Touch ID
- When you register, the device generates a new private–public key pair and stores the private key in secure hardware.
- The public key goes to the website or app, just like with Face ID.
The difference is only in the local verification step: you touch the sensor instead of showing your face.
2. Signing In with Touch ID
During login:
- The browser or app triggers the platform authenticator, which prompts you to use Touch ID.
- A successful fingerprint scan unlocks the private key, which signs the challenge.
- The server checks the signature with your public key and grants access.
From the user’s perspective, passkeys Touch ID feels like “tap the sensor, and you’re in,” but in reality, you’ve just completed strong, phishing‑resistant authentication.
Passkeys and Biometric Login with Face ID / Touch ID in 2025
By 2025, passkeys and biometric login with Face ID and Touch ID will have moved from early adoption to mainstream.
- Platforms such as Apple, Google, and major password managers like FastestPass let you store and sync passkeys across devices.
- Data from industry trackers shows that well over 70% of active devices are passkey‑ready, with built‑in biometric authenticators like Face ID or Touch ID.
Real‑world deployments include Google Accounts, where you can sign in with a fingerprint or face scan instead of a password, and services like X (formerly Twitter), which now support Face ID or Touch ID passkeys for passwordless login on iOS.
Why Passkeys Face ID / Touch ID Are More Secure
The security improvement comes from combining device‑bound keys with local biometrics:
- No shared secret to steal: the private key never leaves your device or passes through the web.
- Resistant to phishing: each passkey only works on the exact domain it was registered with, so fake login pages fail.
- Biometric templates stay local: Face data or fingerprints are stored in the secure hardware and are not sent to the service.
This makes Face ID passkey authentication both safer and quicker than traditional two‑step flows like “password + SMS OTP.”
Practical Tips for Using Face ID / Touch ID Passkeys
If you’re considering using Face ID / Touch ID for passkeys in 2025, a few best practices help:
- Turn on Face ID or Touch ID and keep your device updated to at least iOS 16 or macOS Ventura for full passkey support.
- Where available, switch your main accounts (email, banking, social, developer tools) from passwords to passkeys.
- Ensure you have a fallback (device passcode, hardware key, or another trusted device) in case you lose or replace your phone.
For developers, modern identity platforms and SDKs expose WebAuthn/FIDO2 APIs that let you plug in passkeys with minimal custom cryptography.
How FastestPass Supports Passkeys
Are you someone who wakes up first thing in the morning and has to unlock their phone? Now, imagine going through the process of inputting your complex password, or drawing a complex pattern, or entering a PIN to unlock your phone, the FIRST THING IN THE MORNING. Sounds frustrating, right?
What if the solution were simply tapping your phone’s buttons or screen to unlock it with Touch ID? Or what if you could have done it entirely by holding your phone and letting it recognize your Face ID? Well, with FastestPass as your dedicated password manager, the process is made seamless for all your devices that work with Face ID or Touch ID.
Face ID and Touch ID work together with passkeys by acting as a secure and user-friendly method. Instead of using a traditional password, users have to enable biometric authentication in their device settings and use supported apps or websites that allow passkey registration for a seamless setup. If you lose a device protected by passkeys like Face ID or Touch ID, it will be protected, meaning no one will be able to pass through it, since your face and Touch ID are unique characteristics that no one else can be able to create on their own. Passkeys can be synchronized across a number of devices as they are based in the cloud. However, they aren’t supported on every device due to the technology specs in the older devices. Passkeys work on iOS 16 and newer, macOS 13 and newer, Android 9 and newer, and Windows 10 and newer models. No, biometric data stays securely on the device and is never uploaded to the cloud or shared with websites. Modern biometric systems use depth sensing, liveness checks, and secure hardware, making them resistant to simple spoofing like photos or basic fingerprint copies. You can revoke passkeys if a device is lost.
Conclusion
Passkeys Face ID and Passkeys Touch ID are changing how people log in by replacing passwords with cryptography and biometrics that feel almost invisible to the user. In 2025 and beyond, using Face ID / Touch ID for passkeys is quickly becoming the default sign‑in method across major platforms like Apple, Google, and X. Over the next few years, expect passkeys and biometric login with Face ID Touch ID to become the default for most major services, with passwords fading into backup status only.
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