TikTok for iPhone is bringing support for passkeys, a secure authentication method that uses Touch ID or Face ID instead of prompting you to enter passwords.
Once passkey authentication becomes available, you’ll find it in your TikTok settings under a dedicated passkey menu. TikTok saves your login passkey in iCloud Keychain, making it available across all your Apple devices.
TikTok for iPhone launching passkeys-based login
According to the official announcement, TikTok owner ByteDance has joined the FIDO Alliance, the organization that oversees passkey development and counts Apple, Google and Microsoft, among others, as its members.
The feature isn’t immediately available. TikTok will begin bringing passkeys support to iOS users in Asia, Africa, Australia and South America beginning July 2023.
What about folks who live in the United States? And Android customers? Well, some people will need to be patient to get the feature—as per TikTok, additional geographies and operating systems will get support for passkeys “over time.”
When this feature launches in your country, the app will prompt you to turn on passkeys for your TikTok account. Doing so will allow you to use your saved passkey instead of the password for future logins.
The slow adoption of passkeys
Based on the WebAuthentication standard, passkeys use secure cryptographic authentication and are resistant to phishing-based attacks.
This new authentication method has been picking up steam lately. Google supports passkeys as an alternative login option, Microsoft has been testing them in Windows 11, and Apple supports passkey-based login across its websites.
Apple supports passkeys on the iPhone, iPad and Mac as long as the devices are powered by iOS 16.0, iPadOS 16.1 or macOS Ventura or later.
A passkey created on an Apple device is securely stored in your iCloud Keychain which syncs passkeys, passwords and other secrets between your devices. iCloud Keychain is end-to-end encrypted to ensure no one, including Apple, can read it.
“On Apple devices with Touch ID or Face ID available,” reads Apple’s support document, “they can be used to authorize the use of the passkey, which then authenticates the user to the app or website.”