I’ve been using Google Auth as a 2FA app for quite some time. Don’t know why, but somehow I always preferred it over Microsoft Authenticator or Authy or any other alternative for that matter. Probably it’s just the sheer simplicity of it.

Over the time I figured that the only downside of this app for me is migration to another phone. Authy solves it for you with backup to cloud (or so I’ve been told), which is great but also terrible at the same time. Somewhere in the range of using SMS as a 2FA method.

I’d prefer not to share my TOTP secrets with anyone else.

It took me one manual one-by-one secret migration and of course quite a while to finally figure out that Google Authenticator actually offers a batch export of all your TOTP secrets in one go. If I only knew that sooner. But as they say, you live and you learn…

Here is the simple procedure of painless migration of all your TOTP secrets in one go:

1. bring out your old phone & open Google Authenticator
2. tap on three dots
3. tap on ‘transfer accounts’
4. select ‘export accounts’
5. bring out your new phone & open Google Authenticator
6. tap on ‘transfer accounts’
7. select ‘import accounts’ & follow procedure
8. congrats, you did it!