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Forum Discussion
Ryan_Parman
4 years agoDedicated Contributor
Feature Request: Simpler way to save 2FA/MFA backup codes
One of the areas of tedium I often encounter is managing the backup codes that are generated when I setup 2FA/MFA on a new account. They always tell you to print, but c'mon — it's 2022. I haven't own...
Former Member
4 years agoHello team!
1password 8 has provided a new feature with a "special" section for Security questions, this is a fantastic addition, and I would like to suggest continuing on that path with the introduction of another special section "Recovery codes".
Many websites that support 2FA also generate recovery codes in case there is a drift between the client and the server time (or in case the seed has been entirely lost).
Those recovery codes are work keeping around, unfortunately there isn't quite a clear way to manage recovery codes in 1password as of now.
I personally have been creating a section called "Recovery codes" in which I store each of the individual codes as different password fields.
Admittedly it's a bit cumbersome; there are many entries in there (some websites provide more than 10 recovery codes [nextdns.io provides 20!!]), entering them manually can be a bit of a chore and afterwards they tend to simply hang around there taking a lot of visual space in the item card.
Creating a new dedicated section for recovery codes might be able to address both those concerns.
The latter one simply by allowing the "Recovery codes" section to be folded by default (arguably all sections should also be foldable).
The former one by allowing to edit all recovery codes in the section as a single text field which can be parsed by 1password and split in individual fields behind the scenes.
For the edit it might be worth going a bit more in the details.
In read mode it's a section folded by default, the user can unfold the section.
Once unfolded, each code is available as a single field; the codes can be copied/revealed/shown in large type.
In edit mode the entire section can be modified as a whole (an edit button next to the - button for the section for example).
Editing the section shows a single blob of text (similar to the notes section/field) with one code per line, read from the existing individual fields of the section. When saved, the blob of text is parsed (each line is trimmed, leading dashes are removed) and divided in individual fields for each recovery code, replacing effectively all the fields in the section that were there previously.
Each field in the section can still be edited/removed/sorted manually. For all intents and purposes the "section edit" suggested earlier is just an easy way to bulk enter/edit the codes.
The only caveat is that the field names should not be editable (or maybe even visible, after all those are undifferentiated recovery codes).
As an example here is what my cumbersome recovery codes section looks like at the moment:
1Password Version: 8.6.0
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: Not Provided