Comment by morshu9001
5 hours ago
Google Authenticator used to be disconnected from reality like this. Users were asking how to copy the codes to another phone, and they said "you can't, WAI, should add the other phone as a second auth method on every site." Like how people say you shouldn't copy SSH privkeys. I figured out an undocumented way to do it on iPhone by taking an encrypted iTunes backup though.
Eventually they yielded on this, but their later updates had other usability traps. Because Google Auth was the household name for TOTP apps, this maybe ruined TOTP's reputation early-on.
> should add the other phone as a second auth method on every site.
That's the problem right there. Migrating my phone recently (without having broken/bricked the previous one, which is somehow even worse wrt. transferring 2FA these days than getting new phone after old one breaks!), I discovered that most sites I used did not allow more than one authenticator app. If I try to add new phone as second-factor auth method, the website deletes the entry for the old phone.