We’re all encouraged to use strong passwords to reduce the risk of our accounts being hacked. A long password with a random mix of upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols may be much more secure than opting for ‘p4ssw0rd’ but it’s also much more difficult to tell someone else what your password is if they need access to your account. Thankfully there is now a way to share your passwords with other iPhone users safely and securely, without the need to dictate sixteen random characters or make use ofthird-party password managers. Here’s how to share passwords with trusted contacts on iPhone.
How does sharing passwords work on iOS 17?
IniOS 17, it’s now possible to set up groups of trusted contacts with whom you can share passwords and passkeys. You get to select which passwords are shared with the group, so you can share your Netflix password, without having to share your banking app password, too. Once the sharing group is set up, everyone in the group can add new passwords or edit existing ones, and you can create multiple sharing groups so that you can share different passwords with different contacts.
It’s also possible to delete passwords within the group, but doing so will also delete it from your personal password list. Thankfully, the passwords are held in a ‘recently deleted’ folder for 30 days, so you can recover the password to your owniPhoneif you still need it.
The passwords are shared throughiCloud Keychain, which ensures that all the data is securely end-to-end encrypted. It’s a much safer option than dictating your password to someone else, or even writing it down. If you can’t wait until the official release of iOS 17 to make use of password sharing, you caninstall the iOS 17 public betanow.
How to share passwords and passkeys with trusted contacts
to share passwords with other iPhone users, they’ll need to be running iOS 17, and they’ll also need to be in your contacts.
How to share a password via AirDrop
If you want to share passwords with someone who isn’t on iOS 17, or just one to quickly share the password or passkey for a single account, you can also share a passwordusing AirDropif the other person is nearby.
