Global 'never offer me passkeys' opt-out
Problem
For many users, passkeys make login worse on every site: QR-code flows that almost never work, passkey offers that fail, and constant fallback to passwords. There is no way to tell all websites at once that you never want to be offered passkey login again.
Opportunity
A browser extension / client-side signal that suppresses WebAuthn/passkey prompts across every site and communicates the preference, saving users from repeated broken login flows — a small but universally felt friction for password-preferring users.
Market analysis
The idea is already built: a 'Disable Passkeys' Chrome extension with ~4,000 users blocks WebAuthn requests site-wide, and Chrome's own settings plus every major password manager (1Password, Bitwarden) ship per-site suppression. What is genuinely missing is the cross-site 'signal to servers' half, but no standard mechanism exists for it — the browser decides what to offer, not the site.
Market · Password-preferring users frustrated by broken passkey and QR-code flows; a minority slice of a mass market.
Pricing · Free extensions dominate; adjacent paid signals (password-manager subscriptions) monetize convenience elsewhere.
Pros
- + Small, shippable MVP — one extension, one WebAuthn API interception.
- + Genuinely felt friction with visible complaint volume in every browser forum.
Cons
- − Already exists: 'Disable Passkeys' extension plus built-in settings in Chrome, Brave, 1Password and Bitwarden.
- − Communicating the preference to websites has no standard protocol to hook into.
- − Chrome removed the old disable flags; staying ahead of browser changes is constant maintenance.
Source
Hacker News (comments)
The subtle half-truth in this idea is the “communicates the preference” part: WebAuthn conditional UI means the site asks the browser, and the browser decides what UI to show — so a client-side block genuinely solves the user experience, but there is no channel to tell servers anything. That makes the product a maintenance treadmill against Chrome’s WebAuthn internals, monetizable only as a free utility. The honest strategic read: build it in a weekend for the portfolio and the 4,000-user niche the existing extension proves, but do not expect a business — the platforms it depends on are actively working to make it obsolete.