Apple Passwords

For years, iCloud Keychain was the password manager Apple users had but never really saw. The standalone Passwords app, which arrived alongside iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia in late 2024, changes that: the same stored credentials, verification codes and passkeys now live in a visible, browsable app you can actually manage. It costs nothing beyond an Apple Account you already have.

The pitch here is frictionless defaults rather than power-user depth. There's no separate account to create, no master password to memorise, no browser extension to install and no unlock step to fumble through — you sign in, enable iCloud Keychain, and Face ID or Touch ID handles the rest. Credentials surface in the QuickType bar across Safari, native apps and WebViews, and the associated-domains system does a quietly impressive job of knowing that an app and its website are the same login. On a Mac, even system-level prompts like Wi-Fi and server credentials pull from the same vault.

This is squarely for the person whose phone, tablet and laptop all have an Apple logo on them, and who has been putting off setting up a password manager because it seemed like work. It is emphatically not for anyone with a Windows PC, an Android phone, or a household that mixes platforms.

Judged on what it sets out to do, Apple Passwords is hard to argue with. The feature list covers the essentials properly rather than superficially: strong password generation, passkey storage, built-in two-factor verification codes that remove the need for a separate authenticator app, breach and password-health alerts, and Shared Groups for handing credentials to family. That it all syncs automatically and costs literally nothing makes it the highest-value option on the market for its intended audience by a wide margin.

The ceiling is real, though. Reviewers consistently land on the same two limitations, and we'd agree with them: this is Apple-only, and it's comparatively basic next to paid managers. The notes field can't take attachments. A password can belong to only one Shared Group at a time, which is a genuinely awkward constraint if you're trying to manage overlapping family and work sharing. And it requires reasonably current OS versions, so older hardware is left out. There's no cross-platform escape hatch — this isn't a product with a weak Windows client, it simply doesn't have one.

That leaves a slightly unusual verdict. As a password manager in the abstract, it's mid-tier. As the free, zero-effort thing already sitting on hundreds of millions of Apple devices, it's excellent, and the broad user sentiment reflected in its App Store standing suggests people agree. We'd knock a point off for the ecosystem lock-in and the missing organisational niceties, but if you're all-Apple and currently using nothing, the honest advice is to stop reading and go turn it on.