2FA on Desktop PC
Short introduction in how to retrieve 2FA codes from your PC, instead of smartphone.
Geek Level: medium
When all of your accounts are already secured with 2FA — next problem arises, it is somehow annoying to take the phone, login to phone, find and open Google Authenticator, see the numbers, remember the numbers, and then enter it into the website.
See how many steps required there? 😆
What if we can make it easy, so that you can get the code(s) from PC application instead? One of the way that I have been doing, is by using WinAuth (https://winauth.github.io/winauth/download.html).
Right now we will discuss of using WinAuth on Windows PC. For Linux OS will be discussed later.
For Mac OS ?
I personally, currently do not put any interest in Mac and do not understand why people are using it 🔥 😄 💣 If you want easy of access, you use Windows. If you play games, you do them on Windows, not Mac. If you want something powerful and also free, you get Linux. Powerful, secure and reliable web servers run in Linux. “Mac is the best for hanging out in Starbucks” — ok if you say so, here’s list of authenticator that can run in Mac: Authy, Step Two, Secrets, Authenticator and KeePassXC. How to download and use them, you may need to do some searching.
Get back to topic,
WinAuth can be downloaded from the link above, and you do not need installation, the executable file can be directly opened.
Here’s the idea how you should use it:
Every time you activate and save 2FA, you shall save it in two places. One is your PC using WinAuth, and second is your smartphone.
To add new 2FA code, simply click “add” and choose option “Authenticator”.
On the name you can specify anything you like, ideally this is the web or application that you want to login. For secret code field, you have to transform the barcode into secret key. Here’s the example:
In most cases, the website will provide you with a barcode. But there is always a button or option or link that will show you the secret key. The barcode is just graphical representation of the text, secret key. In above example, you can click “enter manually” that will then display the secret key. In other websites or applications, the terms and options may look different, but the point is, you just have to search for something like “manual” or “secret” or “key”. The image below shows how it looks like after have clicked the option:
There it shows 16 characters of the key. You may copy and paste them into WinAuth. Note: the number of characters may be different in other website.
After entering the keys, you scan the barcode with your smartphone, and see the code. Not long afterwards, you click the “Verify Authenticator” button in WinAuth and see what codes it produces. The idea is to compare whether WinAuth and your smartphone google authenticator produce same codes or not.
If yes : save the WinAuth configuration (click OK), and you are done for this step.
If no: check again, you may have entered the wrong key (typo) into WinAuth.
After saving your first 2FA code with WinAuth, it will ask you to create a password. This will be you master password you need to open WinAuth, so that nobody else but you, can see the codes.
Ensure that you create strong password, and ensure you remember it. If you forgot the password, absolutely there is no way to recover your password. You have to delete the configuration file located on : C:\Users\{your username}\AppData\Roaming\WinAuth\winauth.xml and then restart from beginning. From empty.
You can transfer winauth.xml file to other PC, as backup, as well use it on Linux. With correct password, it will show all the codes you have saved.
Now every time you need to login to a website, you only need to open WinAuth, and pick a code from there :
The right button, the refresh circle button is used to get the code. Then you can right click and copy code, you don’t have to remember the 793656. Just paste it on the login page.
Don’t forget to check other article on how to use WinAuth for Linux 🍺
