Passkeys — confirm with your device instead of a password

A passkey lets your phone or laptop vouch for you with a fingerprint, your face or the screen lock you already use, instead of a password you have to type. Adding one to your TrailsIQ account is optional, takes about ten seconds, and you can remove it again whenever you like.

Adding one

Open Profile & preferences from the account menu and scroll to Passkeys.

1. Give the device a name you will recognize later — Work iPhone, Kitchen laptop, Yubikey on the truck keys. Six months from now this is the only thing telling you which one to remove.
2. Press Add a passkey.
3. Confirm with your password. We ask once, here, because adding a way into your account is exactly the kind of thing worth being sure about.
4. Your device takes over — Face ID, Touch ID, Windows Hello, an Android screen lock, or a security key you plug in. Follow whatever it shows you.

The new device appears in the list with the date you added it. That is all there is to it.

What it changes

A handful of actions in TrailsIQ ask you to confirm even though you are already signed in: inviting or removing a member, lending a trail to another organization, changing your email address, pointing a custom domain at your site, deleting your account. Members, roles & permissions has the full list and the reasoning.

Once you have a passkey, that prompt asks for the device instead of the password. Same moment, same handful of actions, one press rather than a typed password. Everything a crew does in the field — filing maintenance, recording inspections, planning trails, counting stock — asks for nothing, exactly as before.

What it does not change

You still sign in with your email address and password. A passkey on your account is a faster way to confirm the actions above; it is not yet a way to get in at the front door. Nothing about your password changes, and removing every passkey puts you back exactly where you started.

Register more than one

A passkey lives on one device. A phone that goes in a river takes its passkey with it, and nothing on another machine can stand in for it.

Adding a second one — your laptop as well as your phone, or a security key kept somewhere sensible — costs another ten seconds and means a lost device is an inconvenience rather than a problem. Repeat the steps above on the other device; each one gets its own row and its own name.

Removing one

Press Remove on the row. The device is forgotten immediately and the prompt goes back to asking for your password if that was your last one.

Worth doing when you sell a phone, hand a laptop back, or simply cannot remember which device a row is. A passkey you cannot identify is one you should not keep.

Things worth knowing

• Your device decides what it asks for. Some phones want a fingerprint every time; some laptops accept the screen lock they took a few minutes ago. That is the device's setting, not ours.
• The same browser on the same machine is what matters. A passkey added in one browser is not offered by another on the same laptop. Add one in each browser you actually use, or keep the one you use for TrailsIQ.
• A very old browser will say so. The Passkeys section explains it rather than offering a button that cannot work. Your password keeps working as it always has.
• Ten per account. Well past what anybody needs, and there to stop a list nobody can read.

If you are stuck — a device that will not register, a row you cannot remove — ask us and we will sort it out.