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Restoring Google Authenticator 2-Factor Authentication Codes after iPhone Reset

Google Authenticator Iphone Restore

Recently Apple admitted to purposefully reducing the speed of an iPhone to conserve it’s battery life. In other words, they want people with older iPhones to go for a new one because the old ones seem slow and sluggish. As you would imagine, people didn’t take this in very well. There were tons of supporting and opposing articles around Apple’s decision to do this. Anyway, I have an older iPhone 6 Plus model and didn’t feel the need to upgrade (as of yet). And yes, it was slow and sluggish, so I decided to get my battery replaced hoping it would fix the problem. To my surprise, the wait time for a battery replacement of iPhone 6 Plus model was surprisingly long – close to 3 WHOLE months.

I couldn’t wait that long so I called up Apple and the nice guy on the phone ended up replacing my iPhone with a brand new one. He did charge me an out-of-warranty replacement fee but I was okay with that. The recommended procedure for moving your old phone’s data to the new phone is to use the iTunes back up and restore feature. I followed that and all the apps seem to be functioning the way they did.

If you have a lot of apps like I do, it does take quite a bit of time. You have to tap on each app for it to load as they get stuck sometimes. After the restore, it wasn’t amazingly fast but good enough to run the show. The only app that didn’t restore as it should be was the Google Authenticator app which is used for two-factor authentication. So heads up to all the developers out there moving their data to newer phones, Google Authenticator two-factor authentication codes would not be restored.

So you got two options…

  1. Log in to each of the sites you use 2FA on and switch off the 2FA
  2. If you have backup codes, you can reinstall Google 2FA and subsequent codes for each of the sites

Ps. To all the peeps wanting to get an iPhone 10/x, there are rumors that Apple would be releasing a plus version next year. I might or might not be waiting for that 😉