1. Google Authenticator App For Pc
2. Best Google Authenticator App Mac Ios

Pick a site or service that’s listed in your old copy of Google Authenticator (on the old phone) and log into its website or open the app. Find that site’s 2FA setting. It’s probably in the account, password, or security section of the website, although, if the service has a mobile or desktop app, it might be there instead.

Surely you know that the best practice for securing your accounts is toenable two-factor authentication:

When all that is between you and an attacker getting intoyour account is a single password, you’re running a risk that is fargreater than what you need be taking. A password is one factor – “somethingyou know”. Now if we add something you have such as your mobile phone andthe email service verifies your identity when you first log on by sendingan SMS to that thing you have, the security position of your email changesfundamentally.

Troy Hunt,10 email security fundamentals for everyday people

And hopefully you're using an application as your second factor, instead oftext messages. Text messages may not work when you travel to foreigncountries, but you're also reliant upon your wireless carrier to keep yourdata secure:

Two-factor auth using cell phone as second factor: not secure. Terrifying. https://t.co/afQLkJAX1a

Instead, use TOTP (Time-based One-Time Pad) to get a six digit number froma local application. There are many applications that support TOTP, butI keep it old school, and use the Google Authenticator application.

The problem with the Google Authenticator app, though, is that it doesn'tlet you edit the title of a website (the 'issuer') once you've set it up.So you end up with a number that's missing a title, and there's no good wayto identify it.

Here, the first entry is obviously for my Microsoft account, but the secondentry…? I have no idea what it's for:

Thankfully, TOTP is a publishedstandard,so you can actually create - and then scan - your own QR code based onthe secret number that you're given when you turn on two-factor authentication:

The QR code that you scan to set up a new account is generated byconstructing a URL with the secret number and somemetadata,and then encoding that with a QR generator. The format is:

The account_name - as the namesuggests - reflects the name of your account on the website. This is yourusername or email address, generally. Google Authenticator shows this asthe second line of the key.

The secret_key is the secret key thatthe web site gives you when you enable TOTP. (In the example above, it'sXXXX ABCD XXXX ABCD).

Finally, the issuer is the name ofthe website itself. This is the larger header displayed above your key.

Google Authenticator App For Pc

It's such a simple mechanism that you can just create a new URL with thosevalues and then use your favorite QR generating tool to create a QR code foryour custom URL. (Remember to URL-encode any of your values!)

If you don't have a QR generator (I didn't) then you can install the very simpleqrencode package and generate a QRcode into an image file.

Better still, you can specify ANSI as the output type:

And it will dump a QR code straight to your console:

Now you just point Google Authenticator at your terminal window, and youcan see that it adds a secret with a custom title of 'My Title':

Voila!

With the new release of iOS 14.2 for iPhone, there have been major reported problems of the Google Authenticator app crashing every time it is opened. With many designers, developers and project managers using Google Authenticator to gain access to their hosting servers, domain registrars, DNS managers, etc. this can quickly become a major issue. While we all know we’re ‘supposed‘ to keep tabs on our Google Authenticator backup codes, they can sometimes be lost in the madness of everyday work.

Good news is there’s a quick and easy workaround to get you back on track. I’ve tested this process on three iPhones and it’s worked without issue on each.

Step #1
On your iPhone, go to Settings –> General –> iPhone Storage and select the Google Authenticator app from the list of apps.

Step #2
Once you have the Google Authenticator app selected, click Offload App. What this does is uninstall the Google Authenticator app but keeps all the data stored on the phone.

Step #3
Go back to your iPhone home screen and find the Google Authenticator app icon which will be grayed out indicating it has been uninstalled and offloaded. Click the app icon to re-install the app. Once the app is re-installed, you should be able to open it and your authenticator codes will be back as normal.

While this is not my typical WordPress related post, I felt it was affecting enough devs and designers in the community to warrant a quick post. Hopefully, Google will push an app update for Google Authenticator in the near future and this article will no longer be relevant but until then, I hope this makes somebody’s day a little less stressful.

Best Google Authenticator App Mac Ios

Enjoy 🙂