Google Authenticator for iOS gets its most important update yet

Google Authenticator is perhaps the most important app on my iPhone, as I can't log into my important accounts without it. And yet, until now, it had a glaring omission — it was impossible to transfer your accounts to a new iPhone.

With the latest version of the app for iOS 3.1.0, this has finally been remedied, although the implementation still isn't perfect. You can now transfer the accounts to a new device, but you're limited to 10 accounts at a time. Also, after the transfer, the app immediately asks you to delete the accounts on your current device, which you shouldn't do until you've checked whether something has gone wrong with the transfer (or if you like to keep authenticator codes on a secondary phone, as backup).

These minor issues aside, this is a massive improvement. If you use Google Authenticator as a two-factor authentication option for a lot of accounts, once you switch to a new iPhone (which all of us eventually do every now and then), you'll definitely want to transfer your Authenticator accounts as well.

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Prior to this update, when switching to a new phone, you had to erase your old two-factor authentication method on all your online services, create new ones, and then load them onto the new device, one by one. Needless to say, the process was agonizing if you had a lot of accounts. Fortunately, this is now solved.

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Note that the Android version of the app got this update in May 2020.

The app got two other improvements as well: The design has been changed, so that more accounts are shown on the screen at once. Also, the app now supports dark mode, which will automatically turn on if you have system-wide dark mode enabled on your phone.

Two-factor authentication is a must-have option these days if you care about security. By protecting your online accounts only with a password, you can easily fall prey to hackers, especially if you've used the same password on multiple accounts. Google's Authenticator is a widely-supported option, but other apps, such as Authy, beat it on features.

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