I just started looking into WebAuthn this week, and was annoyed that there is no simple way to begin: Chrome (on Ubuntu) doesn't provide a local authenticator,

I just started looking into WebAuthn this week, and was annoyed that there is no simple way to begin: Chrome (on Ubuntu) doesn't provide a local authenticator, unless you use an emulated one. This means any site that wishes to use WebAuthn can't just say "let's do it for everyone," because not everyone might have a phone they want to use, or a security key. I found out [1] that WebCrypto + IndexedDB is pretty much the missing piece, where you can store/retrieve a generated CryptoKey without having access to the private data. I wish the WebAuthn API would handle that for me... The end-result is likely that everyone is using WebAuthn as a 2FA, rather than a password replacement, because on-boarding seems to suck right now. [1] https://stackoverflow.com/a/49479890 https://stackoverflow.com/a/49479890