Synchronizing codes across devices with 4OTP Sync

4OTP apps are available on Windows, Mac, Android phones/tablets and iPhones/iPad. It’s one great power because when at your computer, hunting down your phone, unlocking it and finding the proper code can really be a pain.

Having your 2FA codes apps available, where you use it, is a great comfort but as soon as you have more than a few codes, it becomes tedious and error prone to keep all these apps in sync, always showing all codes, and all the valid ones.

4OTP Sync is the service that solves that problem for 4OTP. It’s an online, fast and secure service that make sure all your 4OTP apps, wherever they run, always show the same codes at all times. While all 4OTP apps free, we charge a small annual fee for using 4OTP Sync.

Here is how to subscribe and enable synchronization on all your 4OTP apps.

Go to the 4OTP Sync dashboard

Press Sign up for Sync anywhere on this site
This takes you to the 4OTP Sync dashboard

Create an account

This is as simple as providing your email address. Each time you want to sign in to your 4OTP dashboard, we’ll send you a message with a “magic” link. Click that link and you’ll be signed in right away.

Enable 2FA

As you can guess, the 4OTP Sync service has two-factor authentication available. We very strongly suggest you enable it right after subscribing. Click the Settings button near the top of the dashboard for that.

Enter the dashboard

When you sign in the first time, you’ll see a nearly empty dashboard:

4OTP Sync dashboard with no subscription

We suggest you click the Settings button and enable two-factor authentication, as well as review language and display information

Pick your language

Just like the 4OTP apps, the 4OTP Sync dashboard comes in 22 languages. Pick your preferred language in the Settings area if it’s not recognized automatically

After pressing the Subscribe to 4OTP Sync button, you’ll see the start page, where price and details are confirmed:

Press this subscribe button, and you’ll be taken to our payment processor, Stripe. Once payment is complete, you are taken back to the dashboard itself:

which should very quickly show your new subscription:

How to get an invoice

Just below your subscription record, you’ll see a large button labelled Invoices and payment methods.

Clicking it will take again to our payment processor, Stripe, where you can download invoices, change expired credit cards

Connect each device to 4OTP Sync

An Access key is the “password” that allows the 4OTP apps running on your phones or your computers to communicate with the 4OTP Sync service. Without that, our servers won’t let them access your 2FA codes.

So the final step in having your 2FA codes synchronized across all your devices is to get an Access key onto each of them. This is done very simply either by:

scanning a QRCode from the 4OTP app on your phone
copy/pasting a key when on a computer

Once you have subscribed, an Access key is created for you. You can find it under the Access key dashboard tab:

List of access keys on the 4OTP Sync dashboard

Note that Access keys are hidden by default, you need to press the Reveal access key and QRCode to actually view them.

Keep your Access keys a secret

If a 3rd-party gets to know an Access key, they can only obtain the raw, encrypted data from our servers.

But they won’t be able to decrypt it and actually access your 2FA codes as they do not have your actual password.

Nevertheless, you want to keep your Access Keys private at all time. Don’t store them anywhere: just go back to your 4OTP dashboard when you need one.

View your access key

Click Reveal access key and QRCode:

An Access key with its QRCode and secret visible on 4OTP Sync dashboard

You can now view the Access key in 2 forms: a QRCode to scan with a phone, or a long string of text to copy/paste.

Connect your devices to 4OTP Sync

Press the Sync button in the bottom toolbar

Open the Synchronization configuration section

If on a phone, click Scan access key QRCode and scan the QRCode displayed on your dashboard (on your computer or another phone)
If on a computer, or using a single phone, press the copy button on the dashboard and paste the key into the Access key manual entry field on your device
Set Enable Synchronization on your device

As soon as you enable synchronization:

existing codes on that device are sent to your other, connected devices
codes from other devices are merged with those on this device

Only if using the same password

Syncing 2FA codes across devices only works if you have been using the same password.

If you connect a device to your 4OTP Sync account - but you used a different password than on your other devices, it will connect fine but codes won’t be synced to and from that device.

Manage your data

Synchronization history

The synchronization history tab shows when and by who your 2FA codes list was modified:

Sync History on 4OTP dashboard, showing current state

Opening the full sync history shows that last 50 changes made your 2FA codes:

Sync History on 4OTP dashboard, showing detailed list

You can use the Revert to this version to have all your devices go back in time and revert to what your 2FA code list was at that time.

Manage your Access keys

While using just one key is fine for almost all use cases, you can also create more keys, rename them and delete them.

Why? There are several use cases:

have a key per device, so that you can later delete keys for phones you don’t use anymore
create additional keys if you want give access to other persons, so that you can delete them later when revoking that access
delete a key if you think it may have fallen in bad hands

Create more keys

Press the Create new key button to add more. 4OTP adds the new key at the bottom of the list.

Rename a key

Click the Rename icon next to a key’s name to enter the name that suits you.

Delete a key

If a key has been compromised, or is on a phone or computer you no longer have or use, you can delete that key to prevent further access to the synchronized codes.

Use the Delete this key button for that.

Deleting an Access key does not clear the device

While deleting an Access key prevents the device(s) that use it from getting updated list of 2FA codes, this will not delete any data that’s already on these devices, phones or computers.

That’s because 4OTP works fully offline. Each device is independent and has a full (encrypted) copy of all your codes.

To safely clear a phone or computer you do not use any more, use the Delete 4OTP data on this device under More | Danger Zone section of your 4OTP app.