I think I’m coming round to liking passkeys, but they’ve still got quite a way to go, particularly in their UX. Tried enrolling a passkey for something in Vivaldi for Android. The presented modal was a little unclear as to what device I was actually enrolling. There wasn’t a clear “Passkey” option. Instead, in a menu of four items, I saw NFC card, or USB dongle as the first two. “This device” was the last one.

I tapped it and went through the prompts. It seemed like it produced a passkey, but when I tried to login, it wouldn’t present it as a login option. It offered something like “Use other device” or something, but nothing to suggest that it had a passkey on file.

I did eventually enroll my phone the desktop browser. The QR code exchange worked surprisingly well, but again, it was unclear which option I actually wanted. I think the choice was “Use other device.” Use? What do you mean by “use?” Either “Enroll other device” or “Setup other device” would’ve be clearer.

This could just be a Vivaldi/Chrome issue, but really, it would be nice for browser to refine this a little. The technical aspects of passkeys are amazing. It’s the UX that’s holding it back.