Google switched on a new way to move saved credentials between password managers on Android on 10 September 2026. Passwords and, for the first time, passkeys can go directly from one app to another, without an export file.

It works today in Google Password Manager, 1Password, Bitwarden and Dashlane, with more apps promised. A footnote on Google's announcement says the feature is compatible with devices running Android 8 and later.

The change fixes two long-standing problems. Moving passwords used to mean exporting them to an unencrypted file that sat on the device. And passkeys could not be moved at all, so switching managers meant recreating every one of them, site by site.

How the handoff works

From the user's side it is three steps. Open the new password manager and choose to import. Android lists the managers on the phone that can export. Tap continue, and Android opens the old manager so you can select what to move, review it and authorise it. The transfer then takes a few seconds.

Underneath, Android's developer documentation describes a same-device exchange with two roles.

  • The exporter, the app that currently holds your credentials, registers with the system in advance what it is able to export.
  • The importer, the new app, sends a request listing the kinds of credential it can accept.

When you authorise the move, the exporter writes your credentials out as a document in the FIDO Credential Exchange Format, a JSON format published by the FIDO Alliance, and the importer reads it. Because a full vault can be larger than the 1 megabyte limit on Android's internal messaging between apps, the framework passes it through a content address backed by temporary cache files. It is not a file you download or handle, but the data does pass through temporary storage.

The check that belongs to the app

The detail worth knowing is where the security decision sits.

Android's guide tells the exporting app, before it writes anything, to verify which app is asking and a secret identifier it registered earlier, to perform any required biometric authentication, and then to produce the export. In the guide's sample code, the biometric or PIN prompt is labelled optional, and the function that decides whether to trust the importing app simply returns true, with a note that real apps should implement proper verification.

So Android coordinates the handoff, and the framework itself verifies which app is calling, but whether a transfer demands your fingerprint or PIN is decided by the app you are moving away from.

Apple made a different choice. Presenting its equivalent for iOS 26 at its developer conference in 2025, it described transfers as user-initiated, direct between participating apps, and secured by local authentication such as Face ID, and said no insecure files are created on disk.

Neither design is careless. Most password managers already lock their vaults behind biometrics or a master password, and an app that exported without asking would stand out. But on Android that choice is the app's.

More than passwords can travel

The format carries much more than logins. The credential types Android's API defines include seeds for two-factor one-time codes, SSH keys, payment cards, passport and identity-document details, Wi-Fi passphrases, API keys and secure notes.

Google's announcement talks about passwords and passkeys, and which other types a given app exports is up to that app. But the plumbing allows a single transfer to carry a password and the two-factor seed that protects it, which makes the export step as sensitive as opening the vault.

Why passkeys were stuck

A passkey is a private key held by your password manager, designed never to be shown to you or to the websites you use. That property is what makes passkeys resistant to phishing, and it is also why there was no safe way to move one: any export would have to handle the very secret passkeys exist to protect.

The FIDO Alliance's credential exchange work is the industry's answer, a common format so managers can hand keys to each other without users ever touching them. Apple built it into iOS 26 last year; Android now follows.

Before you switch

  • Update both apps; the option only appears when both managers support it.
  • Protect the old manager with biometrics or a PIN if it offers that, because its approval screen is the gate.
  • Plan for two copies. Google does not say the old app deletes what it exports. Test a few sign-ins in the new manager, then remove the old data deliberately.
  • Check your second factors. If your old manager stores two-factor codes, check whether they moved, and whether you want them in the same app as your passwords.

What is not established

  • Whether each launch app requires biometric or PIN confirmation before it exports.
  • Which credential types each app exports beyond passwords and passkeys.
  • Whether the exporting app keeps its copy after a transfer.
  • How exporters decide which importing apps to trust, beyond the framework's own check of the caller.
  • Whether transfers between devices or platforms are planned. The current system works on a single device.