How to share passwords on iPhone

We’re all encouraged to use strong passwords to reduce the risk of our accounts being hacked. A long password with a random mix of upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols may be much more secure than opting for ‘p4ssw0rd’ but it’s also much more difficult to tell someone else what your password is if they need access to your account. Thankfully there is now a way to share your passwords with other iPhone users safely and securely, without the need to dictate sixteen random characters or make use of third-party password managers. Here’s how to share passwords with trusted contacts on iPhone.

How does sharing passwords work on iOS 17?

In iOS 17, it’s now possible to set up groups of trusted contacts with whom you can share passwords and passkeys. You get to select which passwords are shared with the group, so you can share your Netflix password, without having to share your banking app password, too. Once the sharing group is set up, everyone in the group can add new passwords or edit existing ones, and you can create multiple sharing groups so that you can share different passwords with different contacts.

It’s also possible to delete passwords within the group, but doing so will also delete it from your personal password list. Thankfully, the passwords are held in a ‘recently deleted’ folder for 30 days, so you can recover the password to your own iPhone if you still need it.

The passwords are shared through iCloud Keychain, which ensures that all the data is securely end-to-end encrypted. It’s a much safer option than dictating your password to someone else, or even writing it down. If you can’t wait until the official release of iOS 17 to make use of password sharing, you can install the iOS 17 public beta now.

In order to share passwords with other iPhone users, they’ll need to be running iOS 17, and they’ll also need to be in your contacts.

1. Open Settings.
2. Scroll down and select Passwords.
3. Under Family Passwords tap Get Started.
4. Tap Continue to confirm that you want to start using the feature.
5. On the New Shared Group page, a default group called Family Passwords will appear.
6. If you already have a Family Sharing group, the contacts from that group will appear as group members.
7. To remove any of these contacts from the group, tap a name and then select Remove From Group.
8. To add additional members to the group, tap Add People.
9. Change the group name if you wish, and tap Create.
10. Select the passwords and passkeys that you want to share and tap Move.
11. If you want to let group members know that you have shared a password with them, you can tap Notify via Messages, otherwise tap Not Now.
12. Any contacts that you add to a group will need to accept the invitation in the Passwords settings on their own iPhone before they can access the shared passwords.
13. To edit group members, or the passwords or passkeys that you want to share with the group, open the Passwords settings again and tap on the name of your shared group.
14. Tap Edit to change which passwords are shared or Manage to add or remove members from the group.

If you want to share passwords with someone who isn’t on iOS 17, or just one to quickly share the password or passkey for a single account, you can also share a password using AirDrop if the other person is nearby.

1. Open Settings.
2. Scroll down and tap Passwords.
3. Select the account you want to share the password for.
4. Tap the Share icon at the top of the screen.
5. Select a nearby device to share the password with.
6. The password will be shared over AirDrop.