Google finally fixed the worst thing about its Authenticator app

If you want to protect your data from hackers, you should definitely use two-factor authentication, and Google Authenticator is a simple, logical choice. And now, it finally got a feature that makes it easy to move its data from one phone to another.

If you’re not familiar with Authenticator, it’s a mobile app to provides a secondary, ever-changing code you must use, along with your password, to get into your online accounts such as Facebook, Gmail and Twitter. This way, even if a hacker somehow gets a hold of your password (and it happens all the time), they can’t get in without the code generated by the Authenticator.

But the Authenticator has driven me crazy over the years as it was impossible to transfer its data to another phone. This meant that, when you switch to a new phone, you had to go through a painful process of re-adding individual accounts to the freshly installed Authenticator. I change phones a lot and this was an immense pain in the butt. 

Now, Google has updated the Authenticator with the ability to transfer all of its data to a new phone. The process is simple and it boils down to choosing an account and scanning a QR code on your old phone. 

In a blog post, Google pointed out that during this transfer, no data is sent to Google’s servers. Also, when the transfer function is used, Google will alert the user and add an event to the app log, to prevent unauthorized use. 

Android Police also points out that the app was visually improved to look better on phones with various resolutions, and a new, blacker version of the dark theme was added. 

Unfortunately, the new feature is currently only available for Android; there’s no word on when it’s coming to iOS. 

You can get Google Authenticator on Google Play and on Apple’s App Store.