Why You Can’t Use Passkeys to Unlock Your Safe

If you're using a recent version of pwSafe on iOS 17+ or macOS 14+, you can store and use passkeys inside your safe. This means pwSafe can help you log in to websites and apps using passkeys — a modern, secure alternative to passwords.

But here’s the key point:

Passkeys help you log in to websites — they don’t unlock your safe.

Why Passkeys Can’t Unlock Your Safe

Passkeys use asymmetric encryption, meaning they rely on two separate keys:

• A public key that websites/apps can see
• A private key that stays securely on your device (inside your safe)

This setup is perfect for logging in — but it doesn’t work for unlocking encrypted files like your password safe.

The Password Safe format (as used by pwSafe) uses symmetric encryption, which means:

• The same key (your password) is used to both lock and unlock the safe
• Without that key, the contents of your safe remain encrypted and unreadable

As these two encryption schemes are inherently incompatible, passkeys cannot be used to unlock your safe.