Solved Passkey Usage

Hi Folks, I sign in to Chrome, FF and Edge with the same Gmail account on two laptops. How do I use a Passkey? do I only need one or one for every browser.

It depends what you're using as the passkey. Passkeys are not browser specific. If you used your phone or a yubikey then it would be a single key across devices. If you use your laptop as the passkey then it's device specific and you'd have two passkeys, one per laptop

The passkey I'm referring to is set by accessing my Gmail account. and is only numbers.

That is likely just a 2nd authentication factor to access the passkey. Passkeys are generally certificate key pairs when they are stored on Windows or mobile devices

These are the settings I have when accessing my Gmail Account.
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2 Step Verification
on since Dec 27 2022
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Passkeys & Security keys
4 keys
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Password OK
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Skip Password when possible
ON
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Authenticator
ON
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Google prompt
2 devices
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Recovery Phone & Mail
OK
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Passkeys can require a strong form of authentication to access the passkey itself this is totally independent of any 2FA you have for a service such as Gmail. If Windows is the passkey device this is typically a Windows hello biometrics or a pin

All I wanted to know is why I have 4 passkeys in my Gmail account.

It's a good idea to go in and name them something meaningful after creation. You created 4 passkeys (or security keys) at some point for your Gmail. If you re-imaged your device and don't sign into a MS account then that would count as 2 passkeys since they are generated key pairs. If you drill into passkeys you can see when they were created and an idea of by what (device type) and when they were last used. If they haven't been used in a long time you can simply remove them

This article is much more than a beginners guide. I've been using passkeys for years now and highly recommend them. Pick a good password manager. I've used 1Password for years and highly recommend it. I use passkeys for everthing and two factor identification (Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator) for those sites that don't support it. I also have 2 Yubikeys one being a backup of the other that are used for access to my Google and Microsoft Accounts.

In answer to your question it's possible to use the same passkey for 2 different browsers but I wouldn't recommend it. It's more secure to use a different passkey for every site. If you have a password manager it will track everthing for you. I always have my passkeys and access to my accounts because my password manager is also on my phone.

I never thought of opening the entrys in my Google account. this is what I found.
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I also use Lastpass.
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