Google has launched a brand new characteristic referred to as Restore Credentials to assist customers restore their account entry to third-party apps securely after migrating to a brand new Android machine.
A part of Android’s Credential Supervisor API, the characteristic goals to cut back the trouble of re-entering the login credentials for each app in the course of the handset substitute.
“With Restore Credentials, apps can seamlessly onboard customers to their accounts on a brand new machine after they restore their apps and knowledge from their earlier machine,” Google’s Neelansh Sahai mentioned.
The tech large mentioned the method happens routinely within the background when a consumer restores apps and knowledge from a earlier machine, enabling apps to signal customers again into the respective apps with out requiring any extra interplay.
That is completed via what’s referred to as a restore key, which, in actuality, is a public key that is suitable with FIDO2 requirements equivalent to passkeys.
Thus when a consumer indicators in to an app that helps this characteristic, their restore secret’s saved to the Credential Supervisor regionally on machine and in encrypted format. Optionally, the encrypted restore key can be saved to the cloud if cloud backup is enabled.
Ought to they transition to a brand new telephone and restore their apps, the restore keys are requested as a part of the method, permitting them to routinely check in to their account with out having to re-enter their login data.
“If the present signed-in consumer is trusted, you may generate a restore key at any level after they’ve authenticated in your app,” Google instructs app builders. “As an illustration, this might be instantly after login or throughout a routine verify for an current restore key.”
App builders are additionally beneficial to delete the related restore key as quickly because the consumer indicators out to keep away from them getting caught in a endless loop of signing out deliberately and routinely getting logged again in.
It is value noting that Apple already has an analogous characteristic in iOS that leverages an attribute referred to as kSecAttrAccessible to manage an app’s entry to a particular credential saved within the iCloud Keychain.
“The kSecAttrAccessible attribute lets you management merchandise availability relative to the lock state of the machine,” Apple notes in its documentation.
“It additionally enables you to specify eligibility for restoration to a brand new machine. If the attribute ends with the string ThisDeviceOnly, the merchandise will be restored to the identical machine that created a backup, but it surely is not migrated when restoring one other machine’s backup knowledge.”
The event comes as Google shipped the primary Developer Preview of Android 16 with the most recent model of the Privateness Sandbox on Android and an improved Privateness Dashboard that provides the flexibility to view which apps have accessed delicate permissions over a seven-day interval.
This additionally follows the launch of the up to date Android Safety Paper, which delves into the working system’s suite of built-in safety capabilities, together with options like theft safety, non-public house, sanitizers, and lockdown mode, which goals to limit entry to a tool by turning off Sensible Lock, biometric unlocking, and notifications on the lock display.