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:

  1. Remove two-factor auth from your account(s).
  2. Add a new Android Authenticator to your account, stopping at the part where you scan the barcode.
  3. Scan the same barcode on both phones.
  4. 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. :(

Red Lion VIC 3371, Australia

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Red Lion VIC 3371, Australia

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