iOS 15.4 stops iCloud Keychain from saving passwords without usernames

iCloud Keychain continues to get more powerful across all of Apple’s platforms. With the forthcoming releases of iOS 15.4, macOS 12.3, and iPadOS 15.4, Apple is making it even easier to save your passwords by addressing a major pain point when it comes to password changes and new account creation.

This is a situation that anyone who uses iCloud Keychain as their password manager has likely encountered. Sometimes, Safari will help you create a strong, unique password for a new website or service, but it will fail to properly assign that password to your user name. Instead, the password is silently saved to your iCloud Keychain without a username attached, which can make it tricky to identify when you need to log in again.

With iOS 15.4, iPadOS 15.4, and macOS 12.3, however, Apple is taking steps to streamline this process. If you create a new password, but Safari isn’t sure which user name that password belongs to, you’ll see a popup asking you to enter the user name for your account on that specific website.

This is a small change, but one that addresses a major pain point with iCloud Keychain as it exists today. This change should make it far less likely that you end up with passwords that aren’t assigned to a user name. Not only does this further streamline the log in process, but it also makes it easier for users to create unique and strong passwords for each website they visit.

As we’ve covered already, another change coming to iCloud Keychain iOS 15.4 is support for adding notes to your saved login information. This is a feature that many third-party password managers have supported for years.

iOS 15.4, iPadOS 15.4, and macOS 12.3 are currently in developer and public beta testing. They are expected to be released to the public sometime in mid-March.