As Microsoft manoeuvres to a safer, passwordless operational environment, Microsoft tests passkey support with Windows 11. The tech giant jazzes up its WebAuthn APIs to support third-party providers.
Microsoft Windows 11 To Boast Passkey Support
According to a recent post, Microsoft has decided to launch a few noteworthy upgrades with the future Windows 11 stable releases as it tests them with the insider build. The most significant upgrade is the rollout of passkey support for third-party authentication services with Windows 11.
As explained, the tech giant allows Windows 11 users to secure their logins with third-party passkey services alongside Windows passkey. That means users can connect those services with Windows Hello and use them for login verifications.
For this purpose, Microsoft has developed a plugin authentication model for passkeys and upgraded the WebAuthn APIs for the plugin authenticator.
Explaining how this will work, the post reads,
Messages in WebAuthn flows will be forwarded to the plugin and responses are returned to the WebAuthn client applications. This enables plugins to create and authenticate with passkeys when requested by the customer.
With this upgrade, Microsoft has empowered its users, particularly Windows 11 users, to enjoy a safe passwordless login verification experience. Microsoft already communicated with services like 1Password and Bitwarden to facilitate its customers. Its coordination with such services first made the news in October when Microsoft announced the launch of a plugin authentication model for passkeys.
Resume Editing Support On OneDrive
Microsoft also announced another feature upgrade it’ll be testing with the Windows Insider build: resuming OneDrive file editing across devices.
Until now, users could sync One Drive files across different devices; however, retrieving the exact file editing state when switching devices was difficult. But with the latest upgrade, users can now continue editing their files even after switching to a different device without noticing lags.
This feature would work like the existing “pick up where you left” option in Microsoft Office products, which is useful for continuing editing. All it takes to use this feature is for the users to stay logged in to their OneDrive accounts on their Windows 11 device as they sign in to their account on the second device. In addition, the users must use this feature when their PC is “locked.” Then, after it’s unlocked, the user would receive the resume ping on their second device.
This change applies to all major Office file formats: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and PDFs.
Microsoft rolled out these changes with the latest Windows 11 Insider Build 22635.4515. Users running this or the higher versions in Beta Channel can experience the new features on their systems.
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