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I have been investigating using webauthn for MFA in my company's application. It looked like a great fit when I started investigating it and I got really excited about the prospect of our users being able to use their phones as authenticators.

However, a colleague with an iPhone pointed out to me that when he tried the example application on https://webauthn.io/ he were not able to select his iPhone and there were only options to add a Android phone to his account. As many of our users he was using chrome on a Windows computer but has a iPhone 12.

To me it seems unthinkable that this scenario wouldn't be supported? Lots of users use Windows and have iOS devices. Am I missing something obvious?

ds99jove
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The wording will change with Chrome 103 to something like „use your phone“.

It already works with an iPhone as well, though. You may need to enable Platform Authenticator Syncing, as the feature is currently only in testing. In iOS 15, turn on the Syncing Platform Authenticator switch under Settings > Developer. The Developer menu is available on your device when you set it up as a development device in Xcode.

Edit: seems like Chrome 103 still uses the "Add a new Android phone" wording :/ I already saw a screenshot somewhere teasing the change so I guess it will come rather sooner than later.

FlxMgdnz
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  • Thanks! Not what I was hoping for as it will not work for a big chunk of our users then. You say the wording changes in Chrome 103, but will the actual functionality change? I guess you still wont be able to use an iphone and scan a qr code? – ds99jove Jun 03 '22 at 07:07
  • QR code scanning will work across platforms, that is the core purpose of the feature. It should work already with the setup you described. Even if Chrome still states "Android phone", an iPhone should also be able to scan the QR code. You may either need to activate Platform Auth sync (see above) or use iOS 16 beta where this setting is always enabled. – FlxMgdnz Jul 11 '22 at 14:04