Apple’s Password Manager Is (Finally) Coming to Chrome for Windows

One of the better ideas to become mainstream over the last decade is the password manager – an app that collects all of your passwords in one spot for safekeeping, allowing automatic fill-outs for forms and suggestions to make your passwords safer. If you don’t mind trusting a company to keep all of your passwords in the cloud, it’s an excellent way to create better passwords and save a ton of time (which is why everyone started doing it).

These days, you can’t fill out a password online without getting one (or two or three) pop-ups asking if you want to save the password for later use.

The solution is to pick just one password platform, whether it’s Apple’s iCloud, Chrome’s password saver, Lastpass, etc. – and then use that across all of your devices. The problem here is compatibility since a password platform doesn’t do much good unless it works with everything you use.

That poses a problem for people who use a combination of devices and browsers, like an iPhone with iCloud Keychain and a laptop with Google Chrome.

Previously iCloud Keychain would only work with Apple apps like Safari or Apple devices like iPhones and iPads. That meant it wasn’t a viable option for those using Chrome on other devices, especially Windows computers or Android smartphones. Now, much of that is changing.

Apple is finally fixing this problem with the latest iCloud update. iCloud Keychain is finally coming to Chrome and everything is better for it.

iCloud Keychain now works with a Chrome extension on the iCloud for Windows app. In practice, this is very easy to set up.

Download the iCloud for Windows app on your Windows computer if you don’t already have it, or update it if you do. You’ll get a new password feature that, once selected, will prompt you to download the Chrome extension for iCloud, which allows iCloud to use all your stored passwords on Chrome. Hooray!

One big caveat, though. The iCloud extension for Chrome isn’t quite ready yet, so it’s not available for download at this time. Since the update to the app is already here, the extension should be hot on its heels, so users probably won’t have to wait long for full implementation.