Descripcion
Rapls Passkey adds passkey sign-in to WordPress. Touch ID, Windows Hello, Face
ID or a security key takes the place of the password, and your server never
holds a shared secret — only a public key, which is useless to anyone who
steals it.
A video walkthrough (in Japanese):
It is built to run where most WordPress sites actually run:
- No PHP extension to install. Nothing beyond what WordPress itself already needs. In particular
gmpis not required, so there is nothing to ask your shared host for and nothing that stops working when the server’s PHP is upgraded. - Nothing leaves your site. The passkey ceremony happens between the browser and your own server. No account, no API key, no third-party service in the login path.
- Passwords keep working. Password login is never switched off in the free plugin. Nobody gets locked out while a site moves across.
- Japanese UI included. Fully translated, alongside the English source.
What the free plugin does
- Passwordless, phishing-resistant sign-in (WebAuthn / FIDO2)
- Same-device passkeys (Touch ID / Windows Hello / Face ID)
- Cross-device sign-in using the browser’s native passkey flow when the browser offers it (scan with your phone). A custom QR approval flow is available in Pro.
- Shortcodes and Gutenberg blocks (login / passkey management) you can embed on any page
- Rename, suspend and resume individual passkeys — a device that is temporarily out of reach can be cut off without destroying the credential
- A site-wide passkey list for administrators (Users -> Passkeys), searchable by owner or name
- Works with two-factor plugins (Wordfence Login Security, Two-Factor, …): a passkey counts as the second factor, while weaker alternative logins must still pass the site’s 2FA
- An audit log of registrations, sign-ins and removals, exportable as CSV
- WP-CLI commands, a first-run configuration check, and an emergency bypass constant
- Fully translatable UI (English source; translations come from translate.wordpress.org)
Shortcodes
Embed them in any page, post, or widget. In the block editor they are also available as the « Sign in with a passkey » and « Manage passkeys » blocks.
[rapls_passkey_login]— a passkey sign-in button for logged-out visitors. Supports theredirect(URL to go to after success) andlabel(button text) attributes.[rapls_passkey_register]— a management UI where logged-in users can register and remove their own passkeys.
Requirements
- WordPress 6.0 or later
- PHP 8.2 or later
- HTTPS, except on localhost — browsers refuse WebAuthn without it
No PHP extension beyond WordPress’s own requirements.
Rapls Passkey Pro
Everything above is free, and stays free. Pro is a separate add-on for the part
that comes after the first passkey: moving a whole site across, and keeping a
way in when a device goes missing.
- Sign in from another device — approve a login on your computer from your phone, with a QR code and a four-digit confirmation code so a relayed code cannot be used elsewhere
- A way back in that is not a password — one-time recovery codes and email magic-link sign-in
- Roll out by role — require passkeys for the roles you choose, with a grace period, then turn password login off once everyone is across
- Adaptive step-up — ask for a passkey again after a password sign-in from somewhere unfamiliar
- Authenticator policy — FIDO Metadata Service checks, AAGUID allow and deny lists, trusted-device management
- Operations — security webhooks, adoption reports, multisite network settings, WP-CLI
One-time purchase, no subscription, with a year of updates and a 14-day refund.
Details and pricing
External services
This plugin sends nothing to any external service by default. One optional
integration, off unless you turn it on, contacts a third party:
Google reCAPTCHA v3 — used only when you enable reCAPTCHA for password
logins. When it is on, the visitor’s browser loads
https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api.js, and the plugin sends the resulting
token together with the request IP address to
https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api/siteverify so that Google can score the
request. Nothing is sent while the option is off. This service is provided by
Google and its use is governed by Google’s terms and privacy policy:
- Terms of Service: https://policies.google.com/terms
- Privacy Policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy
No other host is contacted. The plugin bundles the public suffix list it needs
(data/public_suffix_list.dat) rather than fetching it, and passkey ceremonies
happen between the browser and your own site.
Privacy
Authentication data is stored on your own site.
What is stored:
- Passkey credential records (public key, credential ID, sign counter, a label and timestamps) in a custom database table.
- A per-user WebAuthn user handle in user meta, plus one row in the options table recording that the account has one. The handle carries nothing about the person: for accounts created from this version it is derived from the account id and a site secret, and accounts that already had a random handle keep it.
- An optional audit log of passkey events (registration, sign-in, removal) with the acting user, IP address and timestamp.
Retention and removal:
- Passkey records remain until the user or an administrator deletes them; deleting a user removes their passkey records.
- The plugin integrates with WordPress’s built-in personal-data export and erase tools, so a user’s passkey and audit data are included in export/erase requests.
- Uninstalling the plugin (delete from the Plugins screen) drops its custom table and options.
This plugin does not use cookies for tracking. It sets only short-lived, functional cookies during a login ceremony (for example the pending second-factor login), which expire within minutes.
Screenshots
Blocks
This plugin provides 2 blocks.
- Sign in with a passkey
- Manage passkeys
Installacion
- Place the plugin in
wp-content/plugins/rapls-passkey. - Activate « Rapls Passkey » from the Plugins screen.
- Register a passkey from your profile screen.
Nothing else is required: no account, no API key, no configuration before the first passkey. The settings screen shows a first-run check (HTTPS, the relying-party ID, the WebAuthn library) so you can see the site is ready.
FAQ
-
Does this need any PHP extensions?
-
No. It runs on what WordPress itself already requires. Some WebAuthn plugins
needgmpcompiled into PHP, which is not present on every shared host and can
disappear when the host upgrades PHP; this plugin does not use it. -
Yes. There is no extension to install, no persistent process, and nothing
written outside the plugin’s own table and options. -
Which browsers and devices work?
-
Any current browser with a built-in authenticator — Touch ID, Windows Hello,
Face ID — or a FIDO2 security key. If the machine in front of you has no
passkey for the site, the browser’s own cross-device flow lets you scan with
your phone instead. -
Is the free version limited?
-
No. Passkey sign-in, registration, management, the shortcodes and blocks, the
administrator’s passkey list and the two-factor integrations are all in the free
plugin, without a cap, a trial period or a licence key. Rapls Passkey Pro is a
separate add-on that adds different features — cross-device QR login, recovery
codes, enforcement by role — and installing it is not required for anything
described above to work. -
Does it work with my security plugin?
-
It is built to sit alongside them rather than replace them. Plugins that change
the login URL or add an image CAPTCHA keep doing so; the passkey button appears
on whatever login screen your site actually serves. With Wordfence Login
Security or Two-Factor, a passkey satisfies the second factor, and a weaker
alternative login still has to pass the site’s own 2FA. -
Is the plugin available in Japanese?
-
Yes. The Japanese translation is complete, and WordPress.org serves it as a
language pack — no bundled catalogue, so it updates independently of the
plugin. -
What if I lose my passkey and cannot sign in?
-
Password login still works alongside passkeys, so sign in with your password as usual and then remove or re-register passkeys from your profile screen.
You can also manage passkeys from the server with WP-CLI:
wp rapls-passkey list --user=admin wp rapls-passkey remove <id>In an emergency, add the following to wp-config.php. It switches off every passkey requirement and second-factor check this plugin applies; remove it once you have recovered:
define( 'RAPLS_PASSKEY_BYPASS', true ); -
Will passkeys made on a staging site work on the live site?
-
Not by default. A passkey is bound to the domain it was registered on, and that
binding is kept inside the authenticator, not in the database — so moving the
database to production does not carry it across. A passkey registered on
staging.example.com is not offered on example.com.Either register again on the live site and treat staging passkeys as disposable,
or have both sites use the parent domain before anyone registers:add_filter( 'rapls_passkey_rp_id', function () { return 'example.com'; } );With the second, passkeys registered on staging keep working once the database
moves to production, including any you did not mean to keep. Passkeys made on
localhost only ever work on localhost. The setup screen shows the relying-party
ID in use, so this can be settled before the first passkey is registered.
Reviews
Contributors & Developers
“Rapls Passkey – Passwordless Login with WebAuthn” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
“Rapls Passkey – Passwordless Login with WebAuthn” has been translated into 1 locale. Thank you to the translators for their contributions.
Translate “Rapls Passkey – Passwordless Login with WebAuthn” into your language.
Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
0.13.77
- The short description now leads with what decides whether a site can try this safely: your password still works, so a lost device does not lock you out, and the Japanese interface is fully translated.
- New FAQ entry: why passkeys registered on a staging site do not work on the live one, and the two ways to handle it. The lost-passkey entry now says what the emergency constant actually switches off.
- A video walkthrough is linked from the description.
- The changelog had lost 0.13.46–0.13.62. When 0.13.71 trimmed this readme it deleted those entries and pointed to changelog.txt for them, but they were never added there. They are restored from history, and this readme now carries only the latest releases.
- No functional change.
0.13.76
- Packaging fix: in the released package, and only there, every certificate signature check failed. Building this plugin rewrites the bundled libraries into a private namespace so that another plugin carrying the same library cannot collide with ours, and that step rewrites any text shaped like a namespaced class name. One piece of text has that shape without being a class name:
ymdHis\Z, the format a certificate’s validity dates are written in. Certificates were then rewritten with those dates expanded into something else, the bytes stopped matching what the certificate authority had signed, and every certificate was reported as not verifying. Sign-in and registration verify no certificates, so passkeys themselves were unaffected; the Pro add-on’s FIDO metadata refresh does, and it reported « Certificate chain does not validate to a trusted FIDO root » while naming trust anchors that had been correct all along. - The check that would have caught this was being skipped. Running the suite against the built package excused it as needing the bundled libraries under their original names — it does not; it reaches them only through the plugin’s own code. It runs against the package now, and the packaging step’s rewrites are exercised directly as well, so a string it should not touch failing to survive is a test failure rather than a release.
0.13.75
- Translation only: the Japanese catalogue now follows the WordPress Japanese style guide where it had drifted from it. A half-width number takes no space around it in Japanese, so « 0 は無制限です » becomes « 0は無制限です »; and the glossary settles ブラウザー, サーバー and ユーザー over the shorter forms the 長音 rule would otherwise produce. 293 strings, no code change.
- tests/smoke-ja-style.php now checks both, and one more thing: translate.wordpress.org warns when a translation opens in a different letter case from the original. Japanese word order produces that on its own — « Enable reCAPTCHA » becomes « reCAPTCHA を有効にする » — so it is worth catching here rather than at upload time.
0.13.74
- Passkey sign-in no longer depends on the object cache. A sign-in is two requests — the browser asks for a challenge, then sends back the answer — and the challenge was kept in a transient, which WordPress stores in the object cache whenever one is installed. WordPress then assumes the cache will hand the second request what the first one wrote, and that is up to the host, not the plugin: separate PHP-FPM instances and separate servers do not share an APCu segment, and any cache can evict an entry or lose the counter a drop-in namespaces its keys by. Seen on a live site, the challenge was not what came back seconds later, and a correct passkey was refused as expired — which is why the same passkey worked, then did not, then worked again. Challenges and parked two-factor logins now go straight to the database.
- A challenge can no longer be spent twice on such a host. Single use was enforced with an atomic add on the object cache, which decides a winner only among callers the cache actually serializes; where it does not, two requests could both be told they had won. It is now decided by the database.
- Site Health reports an object cache that does not return what an earlier request wrote. It affects far more than this plugin, and nothing else says so.
For the change history of 0.13.72 and earlier releases, see changelog.txt.