Aegis Authenticator - 2FA / TOTP
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Video guide
Video excerpt taken from the full video on Default Apps - Overview
Aegis Authenticator is a free, secure and open source app for Android to manage 2-step verification tokens (aka Two-Factor Authentication, or 2FA) for your online services.
The app can be installed and updated in F-Droid (Basic)
Aegis supports the HOTP and TOTP algorithms, which are industry-standard and widely supported, making Aegis compatible with thousands of services. Any web service that supports Google Authenticator will also work with Aegis Authenticator.
All of your one-time passwords are stored in a vault. If you choose to set a password (highly recommended), the vault will be encrypted using strong cryptography - that way even if someone with malicious intent gets a hold of the vault file, it’s impossible for them to retrieve the contents without knowing the password.
Organization
Over time, you'll likely accumulate tens of entries in your vault. Aegis Authenticator has lots of organization options to make finding the one you need at a particular moment easier. Set a custom icon for an entry to make it easier to find. Search by account name or service name. Have a lot of one-time passwords? Add them to custom groups for easier access. Personal, Work and Social can each get their own group.
Backups
To make sure you will never lose access to your online accounts, Aegis Authenticator can create automatic backups of the vault to a location of your choosing. If your cloud provider supports the Storage Access Framework of Android (like Nextcloud does), it can even create automatic backups to the cloud. Creating manual exports of the vault is also supported.
Be aware that since Aegis works fully offline, all responsibility relies on your the user to keep your valuables safe & secure.
To give you an example how to go about this, we put together this video explainer:
Aegis gives you some extra tools to make backups effective. It will warn you whenever you have entries in the database that have not yet been backed up. Also, it can be set up to do automatic backups on a regular basis.
It is recommended to keep at least one copy of your latest database backup file on a different location, like a USB thumb drive, to keep your 2FA entries restore-able even in case your phone fails.
Making the switch
To make switching easier, Aegis Authenticator can import the entries of lots of other authenticators, including:
2FAS Authenticator, Authenticator Plus, Authy, andOTP, FreeOTP, FreeOTP+, Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, Steam, TOTP Authenticator and WinAuth (root access is required for the apps that don't have an option to export).
Authy users: it has been reported that Authy entries may not be transferable in some cases. To workaround this, the manual approach would be required, which entails disabling your specific 2FA entries originally made via Authy and to re-enable them via Aegis.
Adding a new entry
If you want to set up 2FA for one of your services, you are likely presented a QR Code to scan. Aegis is able to directly process these codes to generate 2FA codes for you to log in.
It is also possible to manually add an entry by putting in the ’Secret key’ yourself.
Note: Aegis does not connect to the internet, so QR code scanning can be considered secure as it only retrieves information to your phone and does not send anything out.
To learn more, be sure to also check out our webinar on 'Sovereign Security'.