> I have always understood that Apple defined a Passkey to be a key pair that is synced through iCloud Keychain. Even their WWDC 2021 presentation distinguishes

> I have always understood that Apple defined a Passkey to be a key pair that is synced through iCloud Keychain. Even their WWDC 2021 presentation distinguishes passkeys to be different than security keys because they are "always with you" (the device sync aspect) and "recoverable". I think the definition was later extended to other cloud sync methods. Their goal was an industry initiative, not an Apple Passkey product. By the time they were released in 2022, the definition loosened to be an experience, e.g. discoverable and providing the option for user verification. The user can choose whether or not to use a passkey provider that is backed up/recoverable, and the relying party gets a signal to this effect. They might use this signal to determine whether to prompt to remove the password login option.