About HID Crescendo Manager

Crescendo Manager provides a simplified way to manage your HID Crescendo® devices quickly and efficiently.

Generate and manage key pairs and digital certificates, certificate signing requests, configure and generate one-time passwords, and set up PIN and management keys through an intuitive, user-friendly interface.

Supported Devices

The following devices are fully supported:

  • Crescendo 4000 Card
  • Crescendo 4000 FIPS Card
  • Crescendo Key V3 (4000 Series)
  • Crescendo Key V3 FIPS (4000 Series)
  • Crescendo 2300 Card
  • Crescendo Key (2300 Series)
  • Crescendo 1150 Card (standalone)
  • Crescendo 144K Card
Important: Security Considerations for Crescendo 4000 Series Smart Cards and Keys

For each new or recycled Crescendo 4000 Card and Crescendo Key V3, it is strongly recommended, for security reasons, to change the factory-default management key.

Tip! Multiple devices (readers and tokens) can be connected simultaneously.
Tip! Multiple instances of Crescendo Manager can be opened and used at the same time.

Supported Operating Systems

Microsoft Windows

  • Microsoft Windows 10 (64-bit edition), version 21H2 and later

  • Microsoft Windows 11, starting from version 23H2 and up to version 25H2 (inclusive)

  • Microsoft Windows 11 ARM64, starting from version 25H2

  • Microsoft Windows Server 2019

  • Microsoft Windows Server 2022

  • Microsoft Windows Server 2025

Note: Crescendo Manager may be compatible with some older versions, but they are not officially supported.
Note: For installing Crescendo Manager on the Windows Server Core (Datacenter), Server Core App Compatibility Feature must be installed.

MacOS

  • MacOS 14 and later, compatible with both Intel and Apple Silicon chips

Release Notes

What's New in Crescendo Manager 9.9

Main New Features and Improvements

  • (macOS only) Support for Crescendo 4000 FIPS card and Crescendo Key V3 FIPS has been added.

  • (macOS only) A dialog for viewing middleware diagnostics has been added, showing applet versions for connected devices and other diagnostic information.

General Improvements and Bug Fixes

  • Offline PIN unblocking using the PUK on Crescendo 144K cards has been added.

  • Support for PIN unblocking on devices with v2.7.x applets has been added.

  • Support for applet v2.7 cards has been enhanced to recognize and change XAUTH2, including on standalone Crescendo 144K cards.

  • An issue where CSRs generated in Crescendo Manager were missing required empty attributes has been fixed.

  • An issue affecting the use of PINs on applet v3.0.1 and later when importing or generating keys and certificates has been fixed.

  • The option to disable a slot for contactless (NFC) use when importing or generating a private key in Crescendo Manager has been added for Crescendo 4000 family devices, provided that the contactless firewall is enabled on the device.

  • Support for importing keys on Crescendo 2300 cards and Crescendo Key V1 tokens has been added.

  • Fixed an issue that prevented FIDO credentials with long relying party IDs from being enumerated correctly.

  • Improved cache invalidation for Crescendo 2300 cards (case #04141506).

  • Fixed a token property parsing issue that prevented Crescendo Key V1 tokens from being used in Crescendo Manager.

  • (Windows only) Fixed an issue where certificates uploaded using Crescendo Manager were missing the KSP binding.

  • (macOS only) Implemented support for Crescendo 2300 cards with applet v3.0.0 with a 9B admin key (case #04141506).

Known Limitations

  • (Windows only) Configuring WDAC or AppLocker to use PowerShell Constrained Language Mode may prevent the PowerShell scripts included in the Crescendo Manager MSI installer from running. As a result, you may be unable to install a new version of Crescendo Manager or uninstall or update an existing installation on a Windows machine.

    Until a solution is available, temporarily disable this mode before installing, updating, or uninstalling Crescendo Manager on Windows. We are working on an installer update that will support this security mechanism.

  • (macOS only) Some PIN-protected operations may fail intermittently on Crescendo 1xxx and Crescendo 144K cards with applet v2.7.

Tip!

To access documentation for other releases, visit the Crescendo Manager documentation page.