iOS 17 lets you share iCloud passwords with friends and family
By ForGeeks For the past few years, Apple has been improving password management to encourage people to use separate, hard-to-guess passwords for each site, and the latest enhancement adds the ability to share passwords.
In iOS 17, the Family Passwords feature is designed to let you share your passwords and keys with friends and family. The «Passwords» section of the «Settings» app lets you create a group of people to share your passwords with.
With the setup process, you can select trusted contacts to share. Everyone in the group can choose passwords and keys to share with others. For example, you can share passwords to streaming services and online bill payment sites without having to provide a password to your bank.
After creating a group, you can choose specific passwords to share, and then group members can upload their own. Each participant can edit and add passwords, and changes are synchronized across the group. There is an option to create multiple groups, so you can create a group with your spouse and kids and then a separate group with just your spouse, or a roommate and friend group.
The person who created the group can add and remove people as they see fit, and you can also remove the entire group. Adding people to a group requires the person to be in your contact list and everyone must have iOS 17 installed.
Similar to regular passwords, shared passwords are stored in the iCloud Keychain and are encrypted end-to-end. Passkeys, Apple’s device-proven alternative to passwords, can also be shared.
The addition of multi-password sharing brings Apple’s free built-in «Password» feature closer to third-party apps like 1Password and LastPass, as there was previously no easy, free and secure way to share passwords between Apple device users.
