Windows Hello as Passkeys for third party websites

What should I do if I lose the passkeys for third party websites after reformatting the computer? Some websites such as Playstation automatically remove passwords when creating a new passkey. It says if I lose the passkeys I would need to recover the account. Windows Hello passkeys can't be synced to other devices because it's tied to this computer only unlike other password managers and iCloud Keychain.

Hello Keith,

Usually when this happens, you can just delete the passkey for the site since it's no longer valid, and create/save a new one.

Keith Weisshar said:

It says if I lose the passkeys I would need to recover the account. Windows Hello passkeys can't be synced to other devices because it's tied to this computer only unlike other password managers and iCloud Keychain.

Click to expand...

Hello Keith,

The premise of using a Passkey without a password as a backup is that, when you lose the passkey, you go through the site's recovery process, just like losing the password for a password account now. Since passkey is so new, I haven't seen this implemented yet, and most sites still use passwords/2FA as backups.

Generally, we probably can expect recovery processes to use email / phone number / some shared secrets as they are now with recovering a password account. You should be careful with passkey-only account, though, because there will be hicups. If I were you, I would have a backup passkey (on other machines, phones, or security keys). If this is impossible, I would study how the site's recovery process is. If I am not confident, I may forgo using passkey for the site for now if the account is important or hard to replace.

Other alternatives:
1. Password managers, such as Bitwarden, do sync passkeys across machines now.
2. Windows will sync passkeys (hopefully, selectable) in the future.