PublicKeyCredential.isUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailable()

isUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailable() is a static method of the PublicKeyCredential interface that returns a Promise which resolves to true if a user-verifying platform authenticator is available.

A user-verifying platform authenticator is a kind of multi-factor authenticator that is part of the client device (it is generally not removable) and that involves an action from the user in order to identify them.

At the time of this writing, this method's result only resolves to true on Windows when Windows Hello capabilities are available (on recent versions of this OS).

Syntax

PublicKeyCredential.isUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailable()

Parameters

None.

Return value

A Promise which resolves to a Boolean indicating whether or a not a user-verifying platform authenticator is available. As of today (March 2019), this is basically indicating if Windows Hello may be used with the Web Authentication API and that the user has accepted its use.

Examples

PublicKeyCredential.isUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailable()
  .then(function(available){
    if(available){
      // We can proceed with the creation of a PublicKeyCredential
      // with this authenticator
    } else {
      // Use another kind of authenticator or a classical login/password
      // workflow
    }
  }).catch(function(err){
    // Something went wrong
    console.error(err);
  });

Specifications

Browser compatibility

See also

• Windows Hello
• Web Authentication and Windows Hello - MSDN Guide and especially the special considerations mentioning isUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticator()