Passkeys, the digital credentials that let you sign into apps and websites without entering a password, are getting easier to use for Chrome users.

You can now save passkeys to Google Password Manager, Google’s password manager built into Chrome on Windows, macOS, and Linux, so that your passkeys automatically sync across all your signed-in devices. The Password Manager client on Android can also now automatically sync passkeys, and syncing support for iOS is coming soon. (On ChromeOS, passkey syncing is in beta.)

As an added layer of protection, Google is adding PINs to Password Manager. When you start using passkeys on a new device, you’ll need to know either your PIN or the screen lock code for your Android device. You can set up a six-digit PIN or opt for a longer alphanumeric PIN.

Passkey usage is on the rise. According to the FIDO Alliance, the industry organization that develops authentication standards, 53% of people have enabled passkeys on at least one of their accounts, and passkeys are now supported by 20% of the world’s top 100 websites.

In 2023, Google made passkeys the default sign-in method for all users. More recently, the company brought passkey support to its Advanced Protection Program, a program for people at high risk of targeted attacks, like politicians and candidates, ahead of the U.S. presidential election.

The acquisition will take a key infrastructure supplier out of the hands of Anthropic’s competitors. The company told TechCrunch it will wind down all hosted Stainless products, including its SDK generator. An Anthropic spokesperson said Stainless customers will still own the SDKs they’ve generated to date and have full rights to modify and extend them however they wish.

The New York-based startup, founded in 2022, rose to prominence in the emerging AI industry for automating the creation and maintenance of software development kits, or SDKs — the libraries developers use to interact with APIs.

Rattray developed software that could take API specifications and turn them into production-ready SDKs across multiple programming languages, including Python, TypeScript, Kotlin, Go, and Java. It became a popular tool because the platform automatically updates the SDKs as APIs change and eliminated the time-consuming process of manually maintaining them.

The technology is particularly valuable to companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Replicate, Runway, and Cloudflare that are building AI agents that can connect to external software and complete tasks on behalf of users. Stainless’s SDK tools are an easy way to build and maintain those connections — but going forward, the tools will only be available to Anthropic, not its competitors.

According to Anthropic, Stainless software has powered the generation of every official Anthropic SDK since the earliest days of its API.

“I started Stainless because SDKs deserve as much care as the APIs they wrap,” Rattray said in a press release posted Monday. “Anthropic was one of the first teams to bet on this with us. We have been watching what developers have built on Claude over the last few years, which made bringing our teams together an easy decision. The team gets to keep doing the work we love, on the platform where it matters most.”

Source: techcrunch.com