Authenticator Backup
Google's Authenticator acts as a hub for the 2FA accounts, sadly once we lose our phone the data along with it also goes. If we are using 2FA for accounts that do not have any secondary means of support such as OTP or email, We are let out to be in pure frustration. In this article I would like to guide you on a way to backup your details.
Google's Authenticator app stores your data unencrypted in a sqlite database in the data partition of your device. To extract this information, We will need the phone to be rooted. If you feel rooting in a unnecessary risk, you can go about unlocking the bootloader and flashing a custom recovery.
Steps to backup your Authenticator Details
- Open the File Explorer app or the directory browser[Custom Recovery]
- Navigate to the root /
- Go to /Data/Data/com.google.android.apps.authenticator2
- Copy the Databases directory to a preferable location such as internal SD or External SD
- You can choose to encrypt it if you want.
- For Redundancy and backup upload it to Google drive.
Steps to restore your Authenticator Details
Just copy the Databases file inside the Databases directory and paste it in the same data directory as in the above steps.
If you kinda look at one of the files in Shared_prefs folder, you can find that Google's naming preference for a variable is a joke. I could only presume that the app was built by an Intern and was code reviewed by the same intern. LMAO😂
