All posts
Product
·
·
5 min read
Passkeys are ready. Here's how we turned them on by default
What we learned switching passkeys on for 9,000 products, and the fallbacks that kept sign-in working for everyone else.
Tobias Lindqvist
Co-founder and CTO
In September we made passkeys the first step for every new Lintel instance, and existing products could opt in with one toggle. Six weeks later, 41% of sign-ins on instances with passkeys enabled use them, and tickets about forgotten passwords on those instances are down by about a third.
Default on, never mandatory
The biggest decision was what happens when a passkey isn’t available: a borrowed laptop, a browser without platform support, a phone that was just reset. We never hide the other methods. If a passkey fails or the device can’t offer one, the same screen falls back to an email code or a password without an extra click.
That fallback matters more than the passkey itself. A sign-in method that works 95% of the time is a support queue waiting to happen.
Ask after success, not during sign-up
We don’t ask people to create a passkey while they sign up. We ask right after their second successful sign-in, when they already trust the product and the device. Acceptance went from 18% at sign-up to 52% at that later moment.
What you need to do
Nothing, if you use the prebuilt components. If you built your own screens on the headless SDK, update to 4.2 and call startPasskeyEnrollment after a successful sign-in. The migration guide covers both cases.
Keep reading.
More from the blog.
Security
·
Why your sign-in page should never say “wrong password”
Small copy decisions that stop account enumeration without making the page harder to use.
Kwame Asante
Guides
·
A practical guide to organizations and roles
How to model teams, invitations and permissions so your B2B plan doesn't need a rewrite in a year.
Aarav Mehta
Product
·
Designing a sign-in form people finish
Four details from a year of testing: field order, error timing, social buttons and remembering the last method.
Hana Sato