Apple Passwords & Family Sharing

Apple Passwords & Family Sharing: a reader asks…

While I have a Windows 11 PC, I also use an iPhone and iPad, and my wife does as well. We’ve been using a 3rd party password manager, but would like to switch over and just use the Apple Passwords app. We want to be able to share passwords between our Apple accounts too. Can you give us some tips?

I’m going to give you the instructions to do this to answer your question, but below that I’ll give you some reasons why you might want to continuing using a 3rd party password manager, which may or may not apply to your specific situation. First, here’s the instructions:

You’ll want to export all your passwords from the 3rd party password manager – into a CSV file. Put that in your iCloud drive (which should be accessible on your Windows PC assuming you have the iCloud app installed). Virtually all 3rd party password managers have an export function. For example, LastPass has an export link under Advanced Options. Once you click the link, Lastpass first sends you an email where you have to confirm that you want to export your passwords. Click the link in the email, and then go back to the Lastpass>Advanced Options>Export and you can continue to export your passwords to a CSV file. Other password managers will have a similar function to export your passwords.

Once you’ve got that CSV and placed it into your iCloud drive, you can locate it on your iPhone using the Files app and verify that it’s there. Tap on it to download it to your phone. Then tap Settings>Apps>Safari. Scroll down Below History and Website Data and tap Import. Tap Choose File, then choose the CSV file you exported from your other password manager. Tap Import to Safari, then tap Done. For security, you should delete the export file from your iCloud Drive once the import is complete.

Now that you have all your passwords in the Apple Password manager, you can go to your Windows PC, and activate the Apple Passwords extension in your web browser. If you also have a 3rd party password manager, deactivate that one. Now when you go to visit a website that requires a login, you will see the Apple Password manager pop up under the login field so you can pick an entry to fill it in. When you go to a new website and create an account, the Apple Passwords app will ask if you want to save your new credentials, be sure to say yes.

Not quite done yet, there’s another step – sharing those passwords with your spouse. You’ll also do this from your iPhone: Open the Passwords app and tap the New Shared Group link. Name the group, and add your spouse to the group. Your spouse will need to open the app on their iPhone and accept the invitation. One more step for you, you need to move all of your passwords into the group you just created. Unfortunately, you can’t do this en masse, you can only do it one by one:

First tap on the All icon in the Apple Passwords app, then tap on a password, and you’ll see the entry, and a Group item that shows “Not Shared” – tap that and tap the group you created previously. Repeat this as many times as you need to so all your passwords are in the shared group. This works for passwords, passkeys, codes, and even the compromised passwords under the security listing. But it doesn’t work for your list of Wi-Fi login credentials – for those you have to press and hold (then let go) and use the Share link to share that with your spouse by AirDrop, text message, etc. And there’s one more tap to confirm each move.

If this sounds a bit tedious, I think that’s by Apple’s design. They don’t want to make this overly easy to set up, as there is a security concern with sharing login credentials. I will tell you that I have almost 2,000 passwords and passkeys and codes, and hundreds of Wi-Fi credentials – sharing them all would be a huge effort to do one-by-one. If your situation is similar, that may be one good reason to stick with a 3rd party password manager. Here are other reasons:

First off, you are in a mixed environment (Apple iOS and Microsoft Windows). While Apple does have a PC-compatible browser extension and app for its password manager, I’ve found it doesn’t work quite as smoothly in the PC environment. Each time you open the password manager it downloads (synchronizes) your passwords with iCloud, and this can take several seconds. The browser extension does work pretty easily, similar to other 3rd party password managers. And of course, using the Apple password app on your iPhone is dead-simple. But using it on the PC with various web browsers (Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera) it might not always work perfectly well, and you have to be watchful that when you create a new password for a website or other online entity, that the password is captured in the Apple password app.

Secondly, I’m a bit hesitant to place all my (security) eggs in one basket, so to speak. There are several very good 3rd party password managers out there, and any of the leading brands will be as secure as Apple’s and may give you features that you find valuable. For example, PCMag.com has a 2025 review and provides good info to evaluate the leading password managers, see https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-password-managers.

Finally, there really isn’t a good backup to protect you from errors, either by your spouse or yourself. Most 3rd party password managers keep a history of passwords and entries, so that if you or your spouse accidentally delete or change a password entry, either of you can recover it. With Apple passwords, there’s no history of passwords for an entry. I don’t know about you, but I think most of us make mistakes from time to time, and a good backup will save you a lot of time when trying to recover from a boo-boo. With a 3rd party password manager, they either offer a family account or you can both just use the same account to share your passwords between devices and computers, and you can restore an accidentally deleted or changed entry easily.