WhatsApp is testing passkey support on the iPhone

WhatsApp is one of the world's biggest and best cross-platform messaging solutions and it appears that the Meta-owned company is hard at work on getting ready to add a new security feature for iPhone users.

The feature, as first reported by the WhatsApp watchers at WABetaInfo, will see iPhone owners gain support for signing into their accounts using a passkey for the first time. The move will give people a new option for signing into accounts that don't require that they remember any credentials.

Passkeys are seen by some as a replacement for usernames and passwords and they remove the need for people to remember those things - a change that is a huge one in terms of security. People often reuse passwords which puts their accounts at risk and that isn't a consideration when passkeys are used. Instead, passkeys use biometrics to handle the authentication mechanism which in the case of the iPhone means Touch ID or Face ID.

The WABetaInfo report says that the latest version of the WhatsApp app that is currently available to beta testers has a new menu option for setting up passkeys, but that the option isn't currently active. We can expect that to change in a future beta and while we don't yet know when passkey support will be made available to everyone, WhatsApp is normally pretty good at progressing features from beta form into the final shipping version of the app. With that in mind, hopefully it won't be too long until passkey support is available to everyone who wants it.