Security is paramount in this day and age, Google has always been at the forefront when it comes to at least offering you the tools to protect yourself online. One of the tools is enabling 2-step or 2-factor authentication and their Authenticator app has been the go to tool for a number of people for a while – but it’s been pretty ugly in light of all the Material Design floating around, but today Google has fixed that with a brand new update heading to the somewhat forgotten app.
The update to Authenticator has been a welcome breath of fresh air design wise with a nice looking Material Design makeover for both the app and as you can see above, the app icon. It’s been a long time coming for the visual refresh, which has been awaited since Google rolled out Material Design in Lollipop at Google I/O last year. The functionality appears to be the same as the old app, but that’s not a problem as it works quite well.
Also included in the app is support for Android Wear devices, always handy for when your phone is just out of reach. According to the changelog you’ll also find bug fixes and performance improvements and developers can start looking at the implementation of NFC Security Keys using the FIDO Universal 2nd Factor Protocol.
The update seems to be available now – at least it was waiting for me first thing this morning – so head across to Google Play and make sure your apps are up to date.
I find this more exciting than I should. Works well on my watch so far 🙂
I tried this app recently and it’s weird it wants to use a third party QR scanner instead of Google’s own
Does it support multiple devices / chrome extension yet?
I’m using Authy and it’s got way more multi device functionality. I would switch back to the Google app if it brought those features in.
I use both, Google Authenticator for my Google Accounts and Authy for everything else.
I use Authy, but only for “non-critical” services – storing your 2FA in the cloud seems counter-intuitive to me! “Let’s store information to prevent hacking in a place that can be hacked”. But at the same time, the convenience of it being backed up, esp for things that don’t matter so much, like github, Facebook, Humble Bundle etc.