Apple's Passwords app has me hooked with this unique feature

Apple has offered password management features for years, but until iOS 18 there was no dedicated Passwords app. The new app has a lot going for it, but there’s one feature that stands out above the rest: Shared Groups.

Shared Groups Solve a Difficult Passwords App Problem

The Passwords app in iOS 18 takes much of the functionality previously available in the Settings app for iCloud Keychain and expands on it.

One of the new additions that I liked the most is Shared Groups.

Simply put, you can create a group of passwords, access keys, and more that you can share with anyone in your contacts.

From Apple’s support page:

Shared Password Groups are a simple and secure way to share passwords, access keys, and Sign in with Apple credentials with your family and trusted contacts. Anyone in the group can add passwords, access keys, and Sign in with Apple credentials. When shared credentials change, they change across all devices.

I used to share iCloud Keychain passwords with my wife via AirDrop. It was always convenient, but it quickly became problematic. Why? Because logins changed and we each had our own out-of-sync data, which caused a lot of confusion over time.

Shared Groups are easy to create and add passwords to, and they’re flexible enough to use in any way that works for you.

Want to share logins with your significant other? Or with coworkers? Maybe with the PTA at your child’s school? Whoever you need to share with, you can create a group for that purpose. And whenever the login details change, everyone instantly gets the new details.

This versatility of shared groups, which are completely free, is a unique advantage over competing products, which require paid plans for sharing and typically have heavy restrictions on who you can share with.

The Apple Pre-Installed App Advantage

The Passwords app, which is automatically installed on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, also allows Apple to overcome a major hurdle faced by its competitors.

Most of the people you want to share with won't have the same password manager as you, or won't use password software at all. So, two-way sharing with real-time updates is an extremely difficult feature for anyone else to implement.

But Apple is in a unique position to offer an effective sharing feature because the Passwords app is pre-installed, whether your friends and family know about it or not.

What do you think of the Passwords app? Have you used shared groups? Let us know in the comments.