Switching password managers has always meant the same awkward step: export everything to a file, import the file, then remember to delete it. For those few minutes, every password you own sits in plain text in your Downloads folder. And your passkeys cannot come along at all, because no CSV has a column for them.
On an iPhone, Bramble can skip the file. Your old password manager hands everything straight to Bramble, passkeys included, and the phone does the carrying.
It is in the iPhone app, on iOS 26 or later.
What credential exchange is
The FIDO Alliance, the group behind passkeys, wrote two specs so that password managers could stop inventing their own export formats:
- CXF, the Credential Exchange Format. One shared shape for what is in a vault: logins, one-time codes, passkeys, cards, notes and the rest. Every app that speaks it agrees on what each field means.
- CXP, the Credential Exchange Protocol. How that gets from one app to another safely, with nothing written to disk along the way.
Apple built the protocol into iOS 26, so on an iPhone the system does the handover, not either app. You confirm with Face ID, the data goes app to app on the same phone, and there is no file to leak, to sync to the cloud by accident, or to forget about. Bramble’s job is reading and writing the format. The delicate part, moving it between apps, belongs to the operating system.
Bringing things into Bramble
A transfer always starts in the app you are leaving. Bramble cannot reach into another app and take your passwords out of it, which is rather the point. Here is how it goes from Apple Passwords:
- Open Passwords, tap the More button (the three dots) at the top right, and choose Export Data to Another App.
- Choose what to send, all of it or just some, and tap Continue.
- Pick Bramble from the list and confirm with Face ID or your passcode.
- Bramble opens. If you have more than one vault, it asks which one these should go into, then asks you to unlock it as usual.
- Before anything is saved, Bramble shows you what arrived: how many logins, how many passkeys, cards and notes. Tap Import, and that is it.
Other password managers are adding the same option. If yours can export to another app on iOS 26, the steps are much the same: find its export option and pick Bramble at the end. Where that option lives varies from app to app.
You will also see Another app on this device at the top of Bramble’s own import screen. It is there so you know the route exists, but the transfer still has to start on the other side. Tap it with nothing on the way and Bramble will tell you as much.
What comes across
- Logins, with every website address attached, not just the first.
- One-time codes, so your two-factor sign-ins keep working the moment you switch.
- Passkeys, ready to use from Bramble’s AutoFill straight away, and synced to your other devices like everything else.
- Cards, notes, SSH keys, custom fields and tags.
Anything Bramble has no home for yet, like a passport or a Wi-Fi network, arrives as a note with every field kept. Nothing is quietly dropped because it did not fit.
Already moved some of it over? An exact copy of something in your vault is skipped. One that matches the site, username and password but differs elsewhere is held back behind an Import them anyway button, so you decide. Everything else comes straight in.
Where it works
The handover is a system feature, so it goes where the system offers it: iPhones on iOS 26 or later. On an older version, the import card says so and tells you which version you are on.
Android has its own take on this, but Google put it inside Google Play services, and Bramble on Android deliberately does without anything from Google Play. Until it becomes part of Android itself, Bramble there cannot use it. The browser extensions and the desktop app cannot take a transfer today either. On all of those, the regular file imports are still there and cover most of the managers you might be leaving.
It works the other way too. Send to another app in Settings hands your vault to any other app that supports it, the same way and with no file either. Moving in should never mean you cannot move out.
Grab it from the App Store, or read the source. Questions welcome, as always.