Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could just walk up to your locker, glance at your wrist, and see the right combination appear on your smartwatch screen? Particularly if you multiply that by every lock and password you encounter over the course of a day?
Today, 1Password — the popular password manager app — has taken the first step towards solving that by adding support for the Apple Watch. But will it work like you see in the picture? I sure hope so… but I doubt it. I don’t know about you, but I’ve got loads and loads of different passwords in my password manager of choice (I happen to use LastPass), and I can’t imagine how I’d scroll through that all on a tiny screen.
Perhaps 1Password will have a special little folder of passwords that you only use from your wrist? Perhaps, but then how is it any better than just creating a list of wrist-specific passwords in a notepad app or something?
What I want, what I propose, is a smartwatch password app that works as brilliantly in the real world as 1Password and LastPass do in my web browser already. An app that automatically detects when I’m blankly staring at a lock or a password screen, and prompts me to — once I remember it — give my watch a copy of the password. An app that — the next time it thinks I’m in the same location, based on reading a variety of different sensors — automatically reminds me of that password.
Oh, and it wouldn’t hurt if it protected those passwords with my unique heartbeat as well. Wouldn’t want someone to steal my watch (and phone?) and have access to the codes.
Yes, perhaps such an app would just be a stopgap until my watch can actually communicate with my lock, and my computer, and my phone, and automatically open things on cue as soon as it detects that I’m close. That would surely be much better. And we’re definitely on that track.
But in the meanwhile, people are already buying smartwatches. Let’s make ’em a little smarter.