Android can now move passwords and passkeys between password managers on the same phone, with no unencrypted export file needed.

Google has switched on a transfer tool in Android from 10th September 2026 that moves saved passwords and passkeys from one password manager to another without creating an export file. It works on Android 8 and new, and it is live now in Google Password Manager, 1Password, Bitwarden Password Manager and Dashlane, with more partners to follow.

The move takes three steps:

You open the password manager you are switching to and choose its import option.
That app hands the job to Android, which scans the phone for other password managers and shows you which ones it can pull from.
You tap Continue, Android sends you into the old app to pick and approve what leaves, and the data crosses in a few seconds.

Exporting out of Google Password Manager uses the same flow. So this is not a one-way door into having to use Google’s product.

Until now, switching managers meant asking the old app for a CSV or JSON file, which then sat unencrypted in your Downloads folder until you remembered to delete it. Passkeys could not be exported at all, so anyone changing apps had to recreate every passkey on every site by hand. A passkey swaps the shared password for a private key that never leaves your device and a public key held by the service. We explained that back when 54% of 2025’s leaked passwords turned out to be recycled from older breaches. That design is what makes passkeys phishing-resistant, and it is also why there was never a file to copy them out with.

Underneath the new flow is the FIDO Alliance’s Credential Exchange Format, approved as a proposed standard on 14th August 2025. It is a JSON format for moving credentials between managers, and Android’s implementation of it lives in the androidx.credentials providerevents library. The format covers more than sixteen credential types, among them one-time passcodes, payment cards, addresses, secure notes, Wi-Fi logins and SSH keys. What actually moves is up to the two apps at either end, and at launch that means passwords and passkeys.

The transfer runs between apps on the same phone, so it will not push your vault from your phone to say your laptop. And the old app has to authenticate you with a fingerprint, face or PIN before it gives up anything to the new one. Android brokers the handover without the raw credentials passing through the operating system or through any app that has not proved who it is.

Android is doing this late however. Apple already shipped the same FIDO standard in iOS 26 in September 2025, and 1Password, Bitwarden and Dashlane were among the companies that helped write it.