Backup your codes and restore them

While the easiest way to ensure your codes are safely stored and be replicated onto all your devices is 4OTP Sync, you can also very simply backup and then restore all your codes.

Backup all your codes to a file

Open 4OTP on your phone or a computer and select More, then open Backup / Import / Export:

Backup / Import / Export settings in 4OTP

Click on Backup/Export secret keys

4OTP prepares a copy of your codes, fully encrypted and offers to export it. The process is slightly different on a phone/tablet and on a computer

Backup on a phone

When you press the Backup/Export secret keys button, 4OTP starts a sharing dialog on your phone. This allows sending the (encrypted) file, for instance, to:

the storage area on your phone
Google Drive, iCloud, OneDrive, Dropbox, or any such online storage service

4OTP start of Google Authenticator import

Do not email or text

While the sharing dialog offers to send the backup through WhatsApp, text (SMS), email and many other solutions, we suggest you restrict yourself to a backup target that can be more trusted such as your online storage service.

The backup file is fully encrypted but it’s always better to avoid disseminating copies of sensitive information in multiple places that you will inevitably forget about over time.

Backup on a computer (Windows/Mac)

Backup works the same on a computer as on a phone, with the exception that you are offered to simply save the backup file to a destination of your choice on your computer.

Use an online storage service

As the backup is a simple text file, you can save it in the Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, etc folder of your computer. These services will sync the file up to your other devices automatically, allowing you to import back into other 4OTP apps.

Restore a backup

A backup is not useful if you can’t use it to restore things as they were.

You can use a 4OTP backup file (when not using 4OTP Sync instead!) to:

transfer your codes from your phone to your computer
set up 4OTP on a new phone, or on an additional phone or computer
share codes with someone else

Share with caution

While the backup and restore process in 4OTP makes it super-easy to grant someone access to all your 2FA codes, you have to be very aware that you are giving them access to all your accounts.

This is just like sharing all your usernames and password, except 2FA codes are your last line of defense against unauthorized access.

Of course, this may be a good way to share access with people at work, but still: only share with people you really, really trust.

Steps to restore a backup file

Locate the 4OTP backup file you want to restore. It’s a simple .txt file, with a name similar to 2025-03-22-19-57-12-4otp-keys-export.4otp.txt. It starts with the date and time the backup was made
Transfer this file onto the device where you want to restore your codes. The file needs to be stored on the device, for instance on your computer hard drive
On that device, in the 4OTP app:
- press More
- open Backup / Import / Export
- click Import secret keys
4OTP will prompt you for the location of the backup file. Navigate to where you saved that file and select it:

4OTP shows how many codes are in the file. Once you confirm, these codes will be merged with the codes currently in the app.

Importing merges codes

You can restore a backup / import codes as often as you need to. When performing the data restore, 4OTP merges the imported codes with the existing ones.

If you just installed 4OTP on the device, there’s no code yet and all codes in the restore file are added.

if 4OTP is already in use, it will compare the existing codes and the ones in the file, and only import the new ones.