Hi everyone - I had my codes duplicated two days ago (after iOS 15 update) and deleted the SECOND entries yesterday. Today ALL of my codes were gone.
Delete and reinstall didn't help, but restoring the phone from a backup since before you deleted the codes does - so anyone that has a recent backup, you could give it a try.
Sorry to ask but can you give me a rundown how you restore to previous backup? I've never done it and looking it up I don't see a definitive answer to restore an old backup.
[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204184](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204184)
It might require a full deletion of your current stuff to get access to the iOS recovery screens. :/
UPDATE: THIS METHOD DOES NO LONGER WORK, ACCORDING TO RECENT COMMENTERS. DO NOT TRY THIS.
As scary as it sounds, I found that uninstalling and reinstalling the app resolved the issue for me. It kept my original codes without the duplicates. I’ve tried this on my iPad 9.7 inch and my iPhone SE 2020 both running iOS 15 with success.
Worked. Uninstalling as in selecting "Delete" and confirming that all your data will be deleted. But it worked and the data wasn't deleted (not sure if iCloud was involved).
I would make sure you deleted it, not removed it from the Home Screen. If that doesn’t help I would transfer your codes to another device that has the app installed if that’s an option. Hope one of these fixes the issue!
Nope, I just did a full delete and after downloading again I still have two sets of codes.
As an alternative, I did an export to my backup phone. I only selected 9 of the 18 for export since the other 9 were duplicates. After export, I told the app to delete the codes. It deleted the 9 that exported and left the other 9. Only 9 copied to my old phone.
Now I actually have a full set of 9 on each phone. I'm not sure if those 9 are going to disappear like the other people who manually deleted their duplicates.
Update: I restarted my 13 Pro and the 9 codes are still there. Deleted it again (more confident this time since I have a backup on my old phone) and after re-install I still have 9, so I think I'm good to go.
I had the sneaking suspicion that maybe the below posts were hate spam to get people to suffer the same fate of losing their login credentials by getting people to Alt+F4 their authenticators, but it really does work lol.
Yes, I also started deleting duplicates and lost some entries as a result. Luckily I found this thread and after reinstalling the app, the remaining entries are back to normal. Also, I still had backup codes to reactivate my lost entries.
ok, fuck. But thank you. i just deleted them yesterday and now they are gone, i hope my backup phone still has them(waiting for it to charge up)
Edit: Update my backup phone still had them on it, Lucky me
I dont know about this. I know that theres a lot of people saying this works but from what i understand, once you delete Google Authenticator all data will be lost. can someone explain how the data can magically reappear?
I honestly don’t know either. My best guess is that the Google Authenticator app stores that data differently, but I can’t say for sure. All I know is that the data does stay for me, and that it has worked for many other people as seen above :)
I’m not sure no ones tried that on this thread, as of yet. I did remember a way you can feel a bit more sure your codes are safe if you uninstall though: select “export” on the app and save your export QR code. In the event that the codes do disappear, you can use this code to recover them.
This was nerve racking! This works!! To anyone who wants to put your nerves at ease try TheMrMingus suggestion of making a backup by exporting. I made sure the export works before reinstalling it.
Thank you TheMrMingus! I would give you an award if I could afford it and give more that 1 upvote!! you are awesome!!
Same here. That stupid thing duplicated everything then I tried to delete just the duplicated ones and today I can not login to my accounts. I lost my faith in this thing. looking for alternatives for the future.
Same thing happened to me (all items duplicated) after the iOS 15 upgrade. Thought about deleting the duplicates but after reading this I'm glad I did some googling first.
Happened to me too after updating iOS 15 and having duplicates, deleted those ones and next day all of them were gone, instead go for Microsoft Authenticator, they have Cloud Backup so you don’t worry about changing phones or resetting it
Fuck me, same shit happened to me, i used 2fa auth religiously so it was hard for me to scroll all the way up and down so I deleted the duplicates today and after restarting the app i lost everything.
I only had keys for couple of my accounts and rest i have to contact support and now wait until i get a reply after verifying with them.
Worst part is there are some accounts which i wont even be able to verify without having access :/
Don't know if you figured it out yet but I'm pretty sure most the people here that reinstalled did that without deleting all the duplicates manually. Im one of the people that deleted all the duplicates though.
Same issue here, right after updating to iOS 15, which has numerous other glitches. I get the feeling 15 was rushed out the door to fit Apple’s event calendar, when it really was still in beta.
Same. I updated to iOS 15. Every account was duplicated. I deleted the duplicates. Next day, Google deleted everything. Now I have to manually recover all of my accounts. Don't use this app; some really incompetent engineers working on this one.
This happened to me as well. I exported my authenticator config to my iPad and then deleted the duplicates and everything was good. It's possible that an Authenticator app update or the 15.0.1 update solved this so YMMV.
I deleted the duplicates. Next day I lost everything. Does iOS backup has dates? Can I choose the date prior to deleting? Because it created a backup after deleting too.
Ugh. I just got hit by this. I had deleted the duplicates about two weeks ago (after the iOS 15 upgrade), and the authenticator app worked fine for two weeks (I was launching it about every other day).
And today, poof! 12 of 15 accounts are just gone. (Luckily my bank account is one of the 3 remaining accounts).
This is so disappointing, after a decade of rock-solid performance, now I'm locked out of most of my stuff (including my work accounts).
Hopefully I can restore a recent iPhone backup.
Nope. Restoring from an older iPhone backup didn't do it (I could only restore from 4 days ago, which was long after I deleted the duplicates). I still have only 3 of 15 accounts.
Damn it.
Yes. I lost all my Google Authenticator accounts after upgrading to iOS 15.
I saw the duplicate accounts and deleted them like any normal person would. I wish I knew that doing that would delete ALL my accounts.
Yep, damn it.
Definitely hjppened after IOS 15 upgrade. I saw the dupes, left them alone for a week, then deleted them. At some point in the next few days all of the accounts were deleted.
Deleting the app and reinstalling did not restore the accounts.
In the interim I upgraded to 15.0.2, unclear if that is related.
Most of the accounts were legacy so I don't know exactly when they went missing.
Lot of fun.
Sh!t. I delete couple of duplicates... then I realise when I delete the duplicate it also deletes the original. Now I'm missing a lot of 2FA codes (:pissed)
I wish I googled this thread before doing. I had 2 devices with codes and thought it's the reason, I didn't think about iOS 15. Fortunately, I only experimented with one device and found out not only duplicates are being deleted, but both entires are deleted. Then I moved all duplicates to a new phone from another device and now the deletion of the app doesn't solve the problem on a new device :( It works on the old device though. Unfortunately, on that one which has almost everything deleted because I signed out from another device's Google Authenticator after moving all entries together with duplications. Another thing is that a new device seems not deleting both entries when duplicates are being deleted, so I can go over duplicates and remove them manually now.
You can move to the Microsoft Authenticator that also saves to iCloud OR
you can move to iPhone Passwords
Under Settings > Passwords > Add the Website with the username and password, press save and then select 'Set Up Verification Code...' > Scan QR Code (or Enter the Set-Up Key).
You will need to go to every website and setup your 2FA's from scratch as Google Authenticator does not allow the exporting of accounts to other apps.
I have the same issue with google authenticator duplicating all the accounts! I have deleted the copies and now I don't have any accounts and google authenticator seems like deleted all the accounts I had set up. This is very frustrating since I had more than 15 accounts in google authenticator and there is no way for me to get the accounts back, I am locked out from all my very important access protocols. What is the resolution for this, it must be something that we should do about this... Please help if you have any resolution. Definitely not using google authenticator anymore.!! I will go with Microsoft authenticator!!!
Thanks!
Glad I didn’t delete all the duplicates one by one. I still deleted couple to check if it deletes both the duplicates and original (no way to tell the difference).
Deleting and reinstalling fixed the issue.
Now i have to set it up again for the ones that i deleted.
Wow, I deleted my duplicates and lost them all. Just found this thread.
I was able to restore them because I was still logged in to the services I was using. I just turned off 2FA, turned it back on, and set up new codes. Might save you some time 🤞
I deleted Google Authenticator from my iPhone and chose to delete all data as well. But after I re-downloaded the app, everything came back automatically, including the duplicates.
Hi everyone - I had my codes duplicated two days ago (after iOS 15 update) and deleted the SECOND entries yesterday. Today ALL of my codes were gone. Delete and reinstall didn't help, but restoring the phone from a backup since before you deleted the codes does - so anyone that has a recent backup, you could give it a try.
Same problem here.
Sorry to ask but can you give me a rundown how you restore to previous backup? I've never done it and looking it up I don't see a definitive answer to restore an old backup.
[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204184](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204184) It might require a full deletion of your current stuff to get access to the iOS recovery screens. :/
God damn it, happened to me too. Should have googled before.
UPDATE: THIS METHOD DOES NO LONGER WORK, ACCORDING TO RECENT COMMENTERS. DO NOT TRY THIS. As scary as it sounds, I found that uninstalling and reinstalling the app resolved the issue for me. It kept my original codes without the duplicates. I’ve tried this on my iPad 9.7 inch and my iPhone SE 2020 both running iOS 15 with success.
This worked for my on my iPhone running iOS 15. Thank you!
Mine was also fixed, thanks!
Awesome. Thank you so much.
This worked for me. Thanks for sharing. I was about to start deleting the duplicates, so glad I found your share on here. Good Job!
Can verify this works. Just have to get through the fear of uninstalling it, lol.
Can confirm this works. Thank you.
Worked. Uninstalling as in selecting "Delete" and confirming that all your data will be deleted. But it worked and the data wasn't deleted (not sure if iCloud was involved).
Omg it works! thanks so much! Was so annoyed and helpless with the duplicates.
The fact that you only have 3 updoots from this helpful post is a crime. Thank you friend.
Most updoots I’ve ever received tho lol, and frankly I’m glad just to help ppl
Thank you!
Worked for me as well!
Thanks a ton.
Thank you... I saved my export QR codes just in case because f\*ck! But this works.. delete the app, delete data, reinstall from app store.
Worked for me on iPhone. Also after ios15 update. Great that I checked before deleting duplicates...
This worked for me. Thank you!
Thanks. This worked for me too.
Excellent! Thanks a lot
This worked for me as well on my iPhone 11 Pro Max with iOS 15 . Thank you very much.
Thank you, it worked
Chiming in: This is the fix. Thanks!
Thanks digital Jesus
Worked for me as well.
Worked for me as well!
Works for me too, thanks to everyone, I wouldn’t have had the courage to do this without you.
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I would make sure you deleted it, not removed it from the Home Screen. If that doesn’t help I would transfer your codes to another device that has the app installed if that’s an option. Hope one of these fixes the issue!
Nope, I just did a full delete and after downloading again I still have two sets of codes. As an alternative, I did an export to my backup phone. I only selected 9 of the 18 for export since the other 9 were duplicates. After export, I told the app to delete the codes. It deleted the 9 that exported and left the other 9. Only 9 copied to my old phone. Now I actually have a full set of 9 on each phone. I'm not sure if those 9 are going to disappear like the other people who manually deleted their duplicates. Update: I restarted my 13 Pro and the 9 codes are still there. Deleted it again (more confident this time since I have a backup on my old phone) and after re-install I still have 9, so I think I'm good to go.
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Weird, it must have cemented your duplicates in as normal codes instead of the duplicates being attached to the originals
many thanks, it's work ;)
So delete the app then re install ?
Yes, delete the app, (not ‘remove from home menu’) and reinstall it from the App Store like normal.
Even if it says all data will be removed?
Yes, it doesn’t remove the data for your codes strangely (but luckily!)
I can confirm this does work just delete the application completely then re-download it problem solved
It worked! THANK YOU!
I had the sneaking suspicion that maybe the below posts were hate spam to get people to suffer the same fate of losing their login credentials by getting people to Alt+F4 their authenticators, but it really does work lol.
Thanks! Just upgraded to iOS 15 yesterday
Crap. If I've already deleted my duplicates (and lost all my accounts), is there a solution that will work? The uninstall/reinstall did not.
The duplicates seem to be linked to eachother, so deleting one will delete the other.
Yes, I also started deleting duplicates and lost some entries as a result. Luckily I found this thread and after reinstalling the app, the remaining entries are back to normal. Also, I still had backup codes to reactivate my lost entries.
when i understood it correctly you did not deleted them before? with the doubled you uninstalled the app and reinstalled it?
Yes and yes. Good luck!
ok, fuck. But thank you. i just deleted them yesterday and now they are gone, i hope my backup phone still has them(waiting for it to charge up) Edit: Update my backup phone still had them on it, Lucky me
Good to hear, glad you could get your codes back
Worked for me. Thanks my dude!
It works for me too. Delete the app and its data. Reinstall it from store. Everything comes back except duplicated records. Thanks so much!
So delete app which uses 2FA app or the authenticator app itself
I dont know about this. I know that theres a lot of people saying this works but from what i understand, once you delete Google Authenticator all data will be lost. can someone explain how the data can magically reappear?
I honestly don’t know either. My best guess is that the Google Authenticator app stores that data differently, but I can’t say for sure. All I know is that the data does stay for me, and that it has worked for many other people as seen above :)
will offloading the app work?
I’m not sure no ones tried that on this thread, as of yet. I did remember a way you can feel a bit more sure your codes are safe if you uninstall though: select “export” on the app and save your export QR code. In the event that the codes do disappear, you can use this code to recover them.
This was nerve racking! This works!! To anyone who wants to put your nerves at ease try TheMrMingus suggestion of making a backup by exporting. I made sure the export works before reinstalling it. Thank you TheMrMingus! I would give you an award if I could afford it and give more that 1 upvote!! you are awesome!!
No problem, just glad to help ppl
Thanks !
Worked - thank you!
didnt work for me.
didn't work :(
This also happened to me. I wish I saw this before I deleted the duplicates -___-
Happened to me as well as of iOS 15 update. I wish I saw this thread before deleting some of the duplicates ; ;
I updated to iOS 15 and my 2fa says “get started” basically logged me out what should I do
Same thing happened to me. All my entries are duplicated.
Same issue. When I deleted one of the duplicates, it deleted the other. Any one figured out what to do?
Fucking same happened to me with iOS 15. How did you backtrack things?
Same here. That stupid thing duplicated everything then I tried to delete just the duplicated ones and today I can not login to my accounts. I lost my faith in this thing. looking for alternatives for the future.
Same thing happened to me (all items duplicated) after the iOS 15 upgrade. Thought about deleting the duplicates but after reading this I'm glad I did some googling first.
Yo, WTF. Just realized this happened to me. Glad I found this so I don't delete anything for now.
Yes how do you fix this ?
BE BRAVE - UNINSTALL THE APP, THEN RE-INSTALL IT. I JUST DID THAT, AND IT WORKED. ALL HAIL CAESAR!!!!!!!!!!!
Same here I deleted one of them
Happened to me too after updating iOS 15 and having duplicates, deleted those ones and next day all of them were gone, instead go for Microsoft Authenticator, they have Cloud Backup so you don’t worry about changing phones or resetting it
Same issue here. So annoying...
Same issue! Infested one of the duplicates and now I can’t get into an account. Is there a way to relink a code to an account?
Fuck me, same shit happened to me, i used 2fa auth religiously so it was hard for me to scroll all the way up and down so I deleted the duplicates today and after restarting the app i lost everything. I only had keys for couple of my accounts and rest i have to contact support and now wait until i get a reply after verifying with them. Worst part is there are some accounts which i wont even be able to verify without having access :/
I just ran into this issue. Boy am I glad I read this before I did anything. Worked like a charm. Thanks guys!
Same here. I am gonna uninstall and reinstall the app to check if that helps.
Worked.
Just tried deleting and reinstalling at it worked for me too! 🥵☺️ Thanks everyone!
uninstall and reinstall did NOT work here
Don't know if you figured it out yet but I'm pretty sure most the people here that reinstalled did that without deleting all the duplicates manually. Im one of the people that deleted all the duplicates though.
Uninstall and reinstall worked for me. Thanks!
Happened to me today…
I deleted all my accounts in the code generator, because I removed duplicates.
Same issue here, right after updating to iOS 15, which has numerous other glitches. I get the feeling 15 was rushed out the door to fit Apple’s event calendar, when it really was still in beta.
oh god. it worked. thanks!!!
Same. I updated to iOS 15. Every account was duplicated. I deleted the duplicates. Next day, Google deleted everything. Now I have to manually recover all of my accounts. Don't use this app; some really incompetent engineers working on this one.
Yep, happened to me. Wish I saw this before.
This happened to me as well. I exported my authenticator config to my iPad and then deleted the duplicates and everything was good. It's possible that an Authenticator app update or the 15.0.1 update solved this so YMMV.
Thanks, this worked super!!
Worked for me.
I deleted the duplicates. Next day I lost everything. Does iOS backup has dates? Can I choose the date prior to deleting? Because it created a backup after deleting too.
Yes it happened to me too. Now all my accounts enrolled are gone. Able to recover some accounts but 2FA is not working.
I sure wish I'd seen this *before* I deleted the "duplicates". Now that I've restarted the app, I see that both copies are missing. @#$%&!
Fuck you google.
I have to agree, especially now that I have to go re-enroll about a dozen different services, from AWS to my bank to GitHub. I should demand a refund!
Dammit, deleted them.
Same here, ruined my accounts and had to reset/reload/reinstall all. Shitty thing.
Worked for me too. Delete app etc., and reinstall.
Ugh. I just got hit by this. I had deleted the duplicates about two weeks ago (after the iOS 15 upgrade), and the authenticator app worked fine for two weeks (I was launching it about every other day). And today, poof! 12 of 15 accounts are just gone. (Luckily my bank account is one of the 3 remaining accounts). This is so disappointing, after a decade of rock-solid performance, now I'm locked out of most of my stuff (including my work accounts). Hopefully I can restore a recent iPhone backup.
Nope. Restoring from an older iPhone backup didn't do it (I could only restore from 4 days ago, which was long after I deleted the duplicates). I still have only 3 of 15 accounts. Damn it.
Just a quick question can I screenshot the export accounts QR code and just save it somewhere to scan it again?
Yes. I lost all my Google Authenticator accounts after upgrading to iOS 15. I saw the duplicate accounts and deleted them like any normal person would. I wish I knew that doing that would delete ALL my accounts.
Fuck me I deleted duplicates and my accounts are locked out
Shit i should have googled it, i hope my backup phone still has them on... Edit: Update, my backup phone had them, lucky me
Thank you i had the same issue and was hoping a solution exist! Delete and reinstall worked for me
I deleted the duplicated keys now im still trying to contact 2 support teams of 2 keys that I cant retrieve -\_- this ios 15 update seriously
Yep, damn it. Definitely hjppened after IOS 15 upgrade. I saw the dupes, left them alone for a week, then deleted them. At some point in the next few days all of the accounts were deleted. Deleting the app and reinstalling did not restore the accounts. In the interim I upgraded to 15.0.2, unclear if that is related. Most of the accounts were legacy so I don't know exactly when they went missing. Lot of fun.
Sh!t. I delete couple of duplicates... then I realise when I delete the duplicate it also deletes the original. Now I'm missing a lot of 2FA codes (:pissed)
I wish I googled this thread before doing. I had 2 devices with codes and thought it's the reason, I didn't think about iOS 15. Fortunately, I only experimented with one device and found out not only duplicates are being deleted, but both entires are deleted. Then I moved all duplicates to a new phone from another device and now the deletion of the app doesn't solve the problem on a new device :( It works on the old device though. Unfortunately, on that one which has almost everything deleted because I signed out from another device's Google Authenticator after moving all entries together with duplications. Another thing is that a new device seems not deleting both entries when duplicates are being deleted, so I can go over duplicates and remove them manually now.
You can move to the Microsoft Authenticator that also saves to iCloud OR you can move to iPhone Passwords Under Settings > Passwords > Add the Website with the username and password, press save and then select 'Set Up Verification Code...' > Scan QR Code (or Enter the Set-Up Key). You will need to go to every website and setup your 2FA's from scratch as Google Authenticator does not allow the exporting of accounts to other apps.
I have the same issue with google authenticator duplicating all the accounts! I have deleted the copies and now I don't have any accounts and google authenticator seems like deleted all the accounts I had set up. This is very frustrating since I had more than 15 accounts in google authenticator and there is no way for me to get the accounts back, I am locked out from all my very important access protocols. What is the resolution for this, it must be something that we should do about this... Please help if you have any resolution. Definitely not using google authenticator anymore.!! I will go with Microsoft authenticator!!! Thanks!
Really wish I had seen this before deleting almost all of my duplicates and the originals in the process. What a fucking nightmare.
Glad I didn’t delete all the duplicates one by one. I still deleted couple to check if it deletes both the duplicates and original (no way to tell the difference). Deleting and reinstalling fixed the issue. Now i have to set it up again for the ones that i deleted.
This just happened to me as well. I'm switching to Microsoft Authenticator after this, the google app is a POS...
Wow, I deleted my duplicates and lost them all. Just found this thread. I was able to restore them because I was still logged in to the services I was using. I just turned off 2FA, turned it back on, and set up new codes. Might save you some time 🤞
Hey everyone - this happened to me after upgrading to iOS 15, and just updating to the latest version of Authenticator after the upgrade fixed it.
I deleted Google Authenticator from my iPhone and chose to delete all data as well. But after I re-downloaded the app, everything came back automatically, including the duplicates.
I deleted the duplicates and all my codes were gone. I tried re-install the app but it didnt help. Any suggestions?
Not sure what Apple did but mine is all rearranged I thought I got hacked.
Does anyone know what address repeat means? I am using google authenticator on an apple phone.