Only if they're not backing up their phone, which seems insane in this day and age.

And even if they're not, if they have a computer or tablet, the passkey will still be available there assuming they share an account.

You can also recover your iCloud Keychain via a designated/trusted Recovery Contact (e.g. spouse, who presumably hasn't destroyed their phone at the exact same time), or via iCloud Keychain escrow.

https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/passwords-devices-iph...

Both of the major smartphone companies (Google and Apple) have pretty robust account recovery processes. Are you familiar with all the options they have? Your comment gives me the impression that you are making assumptions about what would happen, instead of doing research on how it actually works.

I experienced Google's recently and it was very robust.

Even before passkeys, the average user would have major problems if Apple and Google didn't have good account recovery processes.

>with no good way to get back in.

which is why at the very least your email provider gives you a recovery kit to print out (the equivalent of the notebook) and if you can get back into that account you'll likely be able to get into whatever else you signed up for.

There's no difference here between passkeys and any other central storage be it a password manager or a physical notebook. If you lose that access, well you're screwed. But it always beats having hotdog123 as your password for 70 different sites.

Android syncs them to your Google account and iPhone to your iCloud account by default. Which isn't a perfect solution but, again, is pretty good for most people.

Your credential manager provides this sync and backup capability. There are dozens of credential managers available that work on all platforms. You don't have to use the default one on any given platform.

Bitwarden is my personal choice.

iCloud Keychain (or whatever the Google equivalent is). And as I said, it's a fantastic solution for the vast majority of the population (which, coincidentally, are also not Hacker News readers).

It's a beautifully simple experience for Apple users across all their devices.

I can't speak for other platforms; I stopped helping ${EXTENDED_FAMILY} with non-Apple questions because the crap I had to diagnose, debug and deal with for Windows and Android was worse than ${DAY_JOB}.

There are nearly countless ones - 1password for example works everywhere, as does Roboform, bitwarden, keepass, LastPass, nordpass, and many others.

All sync seamlessly and support the major (and often minor) browsers.

Google Password Manager, Bitwarden, 1Password among many others.