GitHub Issue

Remove passkey requirement

Discovered On Apr 1, 2026

Primary Metric open

I’m setting up EmDash locally for development, and the initial admin/setup flow appears to require a passkey. That means I can’t complete first-time setup on machines or environments where WebAuthn/passkeys aren’t practical. It would help to have a non-passkey bootstrap option for local/self-hosted development, for example: - email + password with TOTP - a dev-only fallback auth mode I’m not asking to replace passkeys as the default. The issue is that there doesn’t seem to be a way to finish first-time local setup without them.

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Developer & User Discourse

endymion1818 • Apr 1, 2026

Same here. I don't have the ability to initiate a passkey on my laptop.

Octolus • Apr 1, 2026

That makes absolute no sense to enforce that even for Production, should at least have alternative methods.

stayhc • Apr 1, 2026

I completely agree, there should be alternative methods like traditional email + password with TOTP.

simnaut • Apr 2, 2026

I love passkeys. I hate that I can't get them to work with my linux systems and my iPhone. Having an alternate method would help until linux distros can get their act together

techunleadit • Apr 2, 2026

I've tons of passkey but with EmDash I'm getting
"Failed to verify admin setup"