Official iCloud Passwords Chrome Extension Now On Windows

In the past, if you had an Apple product, you had to live in the Apple ecosystem and only in the Apple ecosystem. Sure, there was iTunes on Windows but that's pretty much on the way out, too. Today's Apple is very different from that, however, and it is more confident in its own products, especially its services, that it doesn't mind mixing with other platforms and software. Knowing that even its own users would sometimes be forced to use a different web browser, Apple is now at least providing them a way to protect themselves even when using Google's Chrome.

Chrome is arguably the world's largest web browser, in more ways than one, and even Safari fans might have to use it from time to time, especially on platforms where Safari isn't available. Those platforms won't have Apple's security either, which means they could be sitting ducks outside of macOS and iOS.

To help mitigate the risks, Apple launched an official Chrome browser extension for iCloud Passwords. In a nutshell, this means that whatever safe and strong passwords users generated and use on Safari on Apple's platforms will now be available when they use Chrome as well. It works both ways, too, as the extension can also store whatever new password you create to the iCloud Keychain logged into the extension.

In a way, this is Apple is subtly telling its users not to use Chrome's built-in password management system and use Apple's instead. This almost makes iCloud Passwords a cross-platform password manager, at least for browser logins, except that it is limited to Windows only.

The iCloud Passwords extension for Chrome on Windows is just the latest app that Apple has brought over to Microsoft's platform. There are whispers that the next ones will be even bigger, with Apple Music and Apple Podcasts putting the legacy iTunes Windows app to rest.