A recent update to Google Authenticator should improve its usefulness for users who frequently use it to sign in to apps and websites. Any one-time two-factor authentication (2FA) codes that Google Authenticator generates will now be synced to users’ Google Accounts.
Prior to this change, one-time Authenticator codes were kept locally on a single device, so losing that device frequently resulted in being unable to sign in to any services that had been configured with Authenticator’s 2FA.
Simply update the Google Authenticator app to access the new sync feature.
Your codes will automatically be backed up and restored on any new device you use if Google Authenticator is connected to a Google Account. By following the instructions on this support page, you can manually transfer your codes to another device even if you are not logged into a Google Account.
Even if the sensitive codes came from a Google product, some users might be hesitant to sync them with Google’s cloud. However, Christiaan Brand, a group product manager at Google, claims that convenience is being pursued without compromising security.
“We released Google Authenticator in 2010 as a free and easy way for sites to add ‘something you have’ 2FA that bolsters user security when signing in,” Brand wrote in the blog post announcing today’s change. “With this update we’re rolling out a solution to this problem, making one time codes more durable by storing them safely in users’ Google Account.”
Of course, Google hasn’t always been completely open about the roadmap for Authenticator. The app was originally developed as an open source project but later changed to a proprietary one; the official open source forks of the Android, iOS, and BlackBerry apps have not received any updates in years.
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