Can she not give them the password to Keychain itself? IE, her login password?
FWIW, if someone knows the device passcode, they can access passwords. My wife uses iCloud Keychain passwords, I know the device passcode for her iPhone and iPad (and her macOS password) and I can access all of her passwords if she asks me for help. If she suddenly became incapacitated I’d be all set. Her phone uses Face ID and that works fine for her, but her iPad uses Touch ID and she’s one of those people for whom Touch ID is, well, touchy, so she basically ignores it and uses the passcode for everything.
And, as you mention, there is shared passwords in settings / passwords now with iOS and iPadOS 17 and Sonoma.
It’s the one reason I’m considering switching from 1Password for my passwords - to make it easier on her and my kids after I die. There are things I like about 1P over iCloud passwords, but frankly I’d probably be ok without it. I could still use 1P to store info like passport numbers, software license codes, etc. And ease for my family after I die, if I die first, is something I’ve been thinking about more and more.
Her login password will certainly work on her Mac but I don’t see how it would be useful remotely. (The original This post says that family her son, the original poster, is not local.)
At first I thought that you were referring to the password for her Apple ID. That’s certainly possible but I think it is ill-advised:
- Personally, I find it clumsy to log out of your own Apple ID, log into hers, and log back into your own. While you’re in hers you’ll no longer have access to information related to your own Apple ID.
- Worse, I think you’d need to do it from a separate macOS account or iDevice in order to avoid commingling photo, contact, and other data synched by iCloud.
Will this continue to work well with Stolen Device Protection turned on in iOS 17.3?
When Stolen Device Protection is turned on, Face ID or Touch ID authentication is required for additional actions, including viewing passwords or passkeys stored in iCloud Keychain …
Since I haven’t used 17.3, I don’t know. But, as I said, my wife would never turn this on - Touch ID just doesn’t work for her, so trying to use passwords on her iPad would make them virtually unusable for her.
Family shared passwords, though, I am sure will continue to be supported, even with that option turned on.
I had missed the not-local part of this, so they’d have to share keychains over iCloud (or do “sneaker-net” on a visit). It is clumsy, but I was reacting to your comment that there was “no way” to do it via Keychain.