As I’ve said before, passwords suck. Microsoft agrees—last year, it announced a goal of getting one billion users to embrace passkeys instead.
As part of that effort, setting up a passkey for a Microsoft account is very easy. You might not have noticed, though, since most people don’t often go into account settings. You’ve likely only seen Windows asking to create and store passkeys for other services and sites you visit on your PC.
Here’s how to do it:
- Go to account.microsoft.com/security
- Under Account, click on Manage how I sign in
- Under Ways to prove who you are, choose Add a new way to sign in or verify
- Select Face, fingerprint, PIN, or security key
- A new screen will appear in your browser tab, along with a Windows pop-up asking to save your passkey. Click OK.
- In the next Windows pop-up, change where the passkey will be stored. By default, Windows will save the passkey to your PC—you don’t want that. For most people, it’ll save your MS account passkey in your Microsoft account.
- To set up a passkey on your phone, use your camera app to scan a QR code. For a security key (e.g., YubiKey or Google Titan Security Key), insert it into your PC.
These screenshots show what the setup process looks like for creating a passkey on your phone.
For any passkeys saved to an iOS or Android device, they’ll be cloud synced through iCloud Keychain or Google Password Manager—so be sure to keep those accounts safe with strong login credentials, too.
You’re all set! You can use this passkey for login anytime, including for Windows itself.