Authenticator App Loses One of Its Features

Ethan James 20 Jul 2022

Google has been working on improving its Authenticator app for a while now. Even though we don’t see updates that often, there have been some changes to the app. In May, the company added the “Click to reveal PIN” option, which didn’t let other people see all two-factor authentication codes. However, the latest update brought something new.

The previous update didn’t make much sense to many people since 2FA codes tend to change every 30 seconds, but maybe for someone, it seems like a good protection method. Nevertheless, in the latest patch, this feature has completely disappeared. Besides, the 5.20R4 update had no other additions or notable fixes. Of course, there were some measures to protect your storage and improved device encryption.

Revealing the PIN can be a useful thing if you are concerned about the safety of your accounts when there are other people around. Nevertheless, it is still strange because these codes change too frequently for anybody to catch the right moment to hack you. There are no comments from Google so far, so the situation stays unexplained. Of course, we can’t deny the fact that maybe the feature will reappear in future updates.

Google Authenticator usually doesn’t get many updates since the app is not so popular in use and doesn’t seem to be stuck on many problems. The latest update on July 14 didn’t change much, and the one before it, which happened in May 2022, was the first update in two years. It is nice to know that all of your codes are in total safety with the app, but still, there might be some fixes we can expect in the future. So far, Authenticator is a good way to keep your accounts safe, so you can rely on Google to ensure your privacy online.

Do you often use Google Authenticator? What other fixes does the app need? Kindly let us know what you think by leaving a comment below.