Trouble saving passkeys for websites flagged by Watchtower

Ok folks, this is the last post in the series of my passkey woes! and with that I have some good news, I have now got my Virgin Media account setup with a passkey! yay! So if you've been following along with my trials and tribulations and all things passkey, you will know that the last issue I had on my list was that Virgin Media did not make it very easy to add a passkey to my account. The passkey is now in place.

Here are the steps (in my case) which was preventing the addition of a passkey. Quiet simply, because I created my account from my iPhone said iPhone was now my "trusted device" meaning after entering username and password face ID finished off the login process. I removed my trusted device and then proceeded to add a new "trusted device" I used "windows hello" (more on this later) then 1Password popped up like a knight in shining armour offering to save a passkey for me! So there you have it, all my issues are (*almost) over.

My findings, and recommendations as a non technically experienced user: I recommend setting up passkeys from a desktop computer and here's why;

If you are trying to add a passkey to any account flagged by 1Password's Watchtower, don't expect to login to that account and see the option of "add a passkey to your account" (although lots of sites will have this option) sometimes they disguise it as setting up "2FA" or "trusted device" or "security key" or "window hello" etc etc. This is what was stumping me. If you are at a website which doesn't have the straight forward "add a passkey to your account" way of doing things, in my experience, iPhone doesn't make it very easy to create a passkey in those situations and although_ it is_ possible, its very cumbersome.

On a desktop computer, it doesn't matter what they call passkeys on your particular account of your particular login -good old 1Password 8 for windows has your back! after choosing whatever description the website uses for a passkey and you go through the process of setting up that device, 1Password pops up and offers to save a new passkey for that site for you! sigh of happiness and then it will sync it to your mobile device so that you can now login without any issues and without jumping through multiple hoops setting passkeys from your phone.

Now don't get me wrong, setting up passkeys using 1Password and your iPhone does work, I have created several that way and it was easy, its only the sites which don't' treat (and name) passkeys as passkeys which makes mobile creation of passkeys a bit of a pain.

So, there you have it folks what started out as a support request ended up as a personal quest and thankfully all my issues are now resolved* It just required some lateral thinking, buckets of tenacity and a smidgeon of luck :)

*The last issue in Watchtower is that Flickr is flagged as having "passkeys available" this is not the case and only the devs here at 1Password can sort this one out!