Apple’s upgraded Passwords app in iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS 15 may be motivation for you to consolidate passwords you’re managing elsewhere. If you ever use Chrome or have a Google account, it’s very likely you have password management set up alongside your Google Account. Fortunately, it’s easy to migrate them into Apple’s system.
A Mac is required, as Passwords for iOS and iPadOS doesn’t offer an import option. Here’s how to proceed:
- Open Chrome
- Go to https://passwords.google.com.
- Click the Gear icon at top to the right of the label Password Manager.
- Click the Export button to the right of Export Passwords.
- Confirm your choice by clicking Export. This will create a file that’s downloaded with the plain text of all your passwords. (Passkeys can’t be exported, but if you’re using Apple devices, they’re already managed by the operating system and synced with iCloud.)
- When prompted to confirm your identity, do so. I was prompted for both a passkey and my account password.
- The file is now downloaded to your default downloads folder in Chrome. Find it, then launch Passwords.
- In Passwords, choose File > Import Passwords from File.
- Click Choose File.
- Select the passwords file via the open dialog and click Import.
- Authenticate by using a fingerprint or other method.
The import completes with a summary dialog. Make sure you don’t miss it–it’s not modal and may hide behind the main Passwords window, as it did for me. Passwords tells you if there are any duplicates on import, which it skips. You can use this as a guide to delete or update outdated entries in Passwords. (Apple doesn’t create an “imported” group or provide any way to determine when the passwords entries were added.)
If you choose to update Passwords by removing duplicate entries there, you can just import the same text file again: Passwords will now skip all the entries it successfully imported and only import the ones that replace the items you just deleted.
Make sure and delete the downloaded file when you’re done and empty the trash. You don’t want to keep passwords in plain text on your computer.
Apple’s iCloud Passwords extension for Google Chrome lets you fill in passwords from your iCloud-based storehouse so you don’t lose access to those entries when using Chrome in the future. An option in iCloud Passwords lets you disable password autofill by Chrome so you don’t wind up with conflicting entries.
This Mac 911 article is in response to a question submitted by Macworld reader Stewart.
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