Making the best of Google Authenticator for One Time Passwords

less than 1 minute read

You can’t reorder tokens on Google Authenticator nor edit the associated description? Read on.

I use one time passwords everywhere I can. It’s a little hassle but increases security by a whole lot. And the good thing is that more and more providers offer this:

  • GMail
  • Google Apps
  • Dropbox
  • Amazon Web Services
  • Your company if they are not too dinosaur-y

Go use one time passwords aka two factor authentication, you will thank me later.

I looked around on iOS and the most well known soft token application that supports both time based and event based tokens is Google Authenticator. Except that Google Authenticator’s UI is really crap and buggy.

The edit button does not seem to function properly and nothing happens most of the time. The trick is to go to Legal information then back. You can now press the edit button and voilà! Things work. You can now:

  • reorder the list properly
  • edit the name under each token

That made my life much easier.

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