Google Authenticator on multiple phones
This might be obvious to others, but I’m posting it here because it took me a while to realise I could do it. Basically, I have two phones here in Australia: a Motorola Defy I use for work-related stuff, and my personal Galaxy Nexus which I’m addicted to flashing new firmware on (by the way, Jelly Bean rules).
Every time I flash something new to my phone and wipe the data off it, I have to remember to disable my two-factor auth on both Google accounts first. I’ve forgotten to do this before, which resulted in burning one of my one time passwords.
I wished for ages I could just set up Google Authenticator on two phones at once and be done with it -that easy I’d have a backup authenticator if I lost one phone, broke one, or whatever. Blizzard let you do this with their authenticator - simply put the restore code in on a second device and both start generating the same pass codes.
I thought about trying to back up the data from authenticator, but figured out this simple solution that note seems amazingly obvious:
- Remove two-factor auth from your account(s).
- Add a new Android Authenticator to your account, stopping at the part where you scan the barcode.
- Scan the same barcode on both phones.
- After verifying both phones are generating the same codes, enter the code to verify it and finish the setup.
I can’t believe I’ve been putting up with it for so long when the solution is so simple. :(
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