Microsoft Authenticator Reviews

Updated: after doing a little more research and trying different things I realized that passwordless logins only happen on my devices. I logged in 5 different devices that were mine and I didn’t have to put a password only a pop up of approval on my other devices which scared me cause it’s one step verification. but I guess it’s cause it recognized my device. But if you grab another device that’s not yours it will ask for a password. I think this is the way it works. Not 100% sure. I think this is a great idea to make it more seamlessly for the user. But it would be pretty great if we can choose to either have that option on or off. Changing my rating to 5 stars. Great work guys.

Overall, I love the app. It does its job and I can't argue with its functionality. However, I give it a four star because I do have a few concerns and complaints I'd like to see implemented. Its the simple aesthetics of the design of the authenticator. I would love to see folder/group settings implemented where you can group codes together under a drop down menu, instead of just having a whole spew of a list of random codes you have to scroll through. Something similar to the functionality of 2FAS Auth. Another thing I'd love to see would be Icons used instead of a boring, plain grey, busthead (maybe use the MS MFA logo?) When a logo isn't supported. Which I would like to also see more support on is icon support from various different services. I find only few companies like FB, Gitbub, and a few others are on the app. Again, I think my biggest complaint is to make it look more sexy of a design and UX. It's kind of boring at the moment. But overall, great app!

I’ve been using this successfully for several months after my company required it. A few weeks ago, on a Saturday, I received an authentification alert on my phone. I wasn’t working and wasn’t trying to log in so I thought, “oh no! Is someone trying to hack my account!? I’m glad I have this handy app that will let me deny the request and block them! Ha take that hacker!” The next time I tried to check email in Outlook, Authenticator immediately said that I denied the request, even though it never gave me the option. I’ve tried uninstalling and reinstalling this app and Outlook, called my company help desk, tried the Microsoft Support option, so far, no one has been able to fix it. So, from my experience, if you block unauthorized access to your account, which is the sole purpose of this app, your account will be permalocked and will be very difficult or (so far for me) impossible to unlock. I can still access my work account through my laptop, I’m just locked out of the Authenticator app and thus Outlook, on my phone.

Microsoft Authenticator is our suggestion for all of our MSP clients when we need to suggest a MFA application to use. The only recommendation I have would be to include the ability to create groups of accounts that could be toggled to display or not; for example I rarely have to see my personal accounts for Facebook or eBay, so being able to group them as “Personal” and not have to scroll past them to find others, but expand on them as needed, would be a huge selling point. And, yes, I understand being able to organize them, but with well over 100 accounts in the app, I’m seemingly scrolling for for just about all of them except for the primary/top 5.

Microsoft Authenticator is by far the most frustrating part of getting a new phone. The piece of trash can't figure out settings (e.g. iCloud) have changed without hard killing the process and reopening it. It also doesn't actually sync over if you get a new phone. Awesome, now I need to get multiple accounts reset after wasting an hour fighting it to try and sync right and logging in literally like 5 times to just make it able to "sync" (the same thing happens with Visual Studio, Outlook, Azure, basically all of their garbage continuously). At least it told me what accounts I have; that's super useful, to know the accounts and be unable to do anything with them. Can't get hacked if I can't get in, checkmate hackers. I didn't expect much from Microsoft since I have to work with and support their products (and seeing as Windows 11's big selling point is ripping off the macOS 10.3 dock), but I'm still disappointed.

Let me start by saying this app works perfectly, the interface is nice, and it is responsive to sign-in requests. I really like the ability to lock the app with Touch ID, but I would like it even better if the iPhone passcode couldn’t be used to unlock after a failed Touch ID attempt. Also, I would really like the ability to disable password sign-in to my Microsoft account on new devices after setting up Authenticator. One last request, that has no impact on function whatsoever, but every other Microsoft app has a nice unified style to the app icons, so Microsoft, can we have a new icon? Please?

Authenticator works very well on iPhone. It has been solid and reliable where i use it on a number of accounts. 5 stars. I was excited to hear a Apple Watch version came out. That is a complete bust, not working at all. Zero stars. The Watch app does nothing but declare that an account can be set up. Fiddling with it for a half hour gave the proclamation ‘setup successful’. Still not producing codes like it should I discovered to my dismay that the iPhone version crashed and had to be removed and reinstalled. Suggestion: take the Watch app off the store until it is properly documented and can be made to work. 5 stars for iPhone app, 0 for watch gives an average of 2.5 or 3.

So a few months ago I got my Xbox account hacked and I was really sad about it because I had lost a lot. Including my games ect. But then I found out the hacker stole my email and put it in this app because at the time I didn’t have this app. So that was a good lesson for me to use this app always and it’s absolutely fantastic because I have a lot of emails like work, school, and gaming of course but I feel like all my emails are super secure also I like the fact that when trying to log into another site with your email you have to get permission from the Authenticator app before you can do anything so if someone gets ahold of your email then they can’t log in at all.

This app was great until 6.4.1 at which time they decided to hide the main feature (the login keys) behind each respective account. So now instead of quickly opening the app ti grab your key you need to drill into each account. For those people that access multiple keys each time this becomes needlessly cumbersome. This feels like change for the sake of change without any forethought into how this will impact user workflow. In other words, it feels like a team of developers trying to justify their existence by running out of things to do. Come on Microsoft, seriously? When something just works why can’t you just leave well enough alone? I get that you wanted to add all the other functionality and it is useful in certain scenarios, but at least give users the option of what screen the app opens up to so we can have the old view where we see all account keys in one view.

Update: Updating my rating back to 4 star. Ok, the option to hide the input form now has a 5 second delay to allow me to see the number. This works out, but a second or two delay before the form pops up in this particular scenario would have been ideal. The app is great and does what it exactly what it is suppose to do. However, there is a bug in which our company login policy requires a number to be typed in. When the number shows up, it gets immediately blocked by the input screen, with barely a glimpse or no time to see what the number was. I'll update the review once this bug is fixed.

I don't believe I've ever been able to get the Authenticator app to work properly with push notifications on the Apple Watch. I get the notification on the Watch just fine. I approve it, select the correct number shown on the screen, then it thinks for a second and says "Something went wrong." I pull out my phone and perform the same steps and it works great, Face ID and all that goodness on the phone. This issue has persisted two different phones, multiple app updates, and different IOS builds. Not sure if MS will ever fix it but I'll hold out hope for them to fix the otherwise great service.

I haven’t been able to use the app successfully after the last update. Repro: add new page to OneNote and add details. Click on yellow banner “Working offline. Sign in to sync notes.” Click “Send notification” It sends a notification, Swipe down on banner alert, select “Approve.” View the message with the the Auth app with number to approve. Select the number to approve and see Facial recognition appear to log into the app. While I sometimes see “Approved” in the top banner, going back to OneNote it’s like it never happened and it keeps asking to send a notification. After numerous tries see error message: “We can’t connect to the server for some reason. Try checking your connection to see if the server is available.”

Been using this app for a long time. Works superbly. Recently gave error message that something had changed on the phone and permission needed to given again but after resetting by signing in with password it now seems to work well again on the phone. Unfortunately when I try to sign in it sends approval to both the app and phone as in the past but only seems to work on the phone. When I try to approve on the watch now it just gives an “Something Happened...” error. Not sure if this fixable by a Microsoft software update or things just need to be reset due to poor communication between the phone and watch.

The app just suddenly disappeared from my phone one day and when trying to recover my accounts, all my backup was lost! The only thing i can think of the reason why this happened was I had installed company profile and other company shenanigans on my phone. Since i wasnt accessing company apps anymore, i deleted all of them. I didnt give any permission for this app to be deleted. What’s worse is I backed up my accounr but somehow i didnt get anything recovered! It even shows the correct latest backup date and time. So i dont understand???? Bad enough the UI/UX just looks so clunky and confusing, esp when backing up…. I had been so happy to use this but now this is a headache. I cant even trust this app wont ghost me one day or backup my authenticator accounts. :/

After upgrading to a new iPhone today, I restored everything from a backup earlier in the day. After installing everything I begin to login to several different accounts like discord, Twitter etc. I didn’t get very far until I got the request to confirm my identity via my Authenticator app. I opened my app to find NOTHING. All of my accounts were gone. I click “begin backup” and get the message that I don’t have a backup on my iCloud account, the same one I had been using for years. I’m completely at a loss. I’ve been frantically trying to contact support from Azure to Microsoft and haven’t found anyone who can or would be willing to help me. I have no idea what to do - this is an atrocious, horrific flaw with this app and I would never have downloaded it if I knew this could possibly happen. I desperately need someone to reach out to me to help correct this issue.

This app used to be great. Somebody recently got the idea to add some additional “security theatre” to it, and now it’s a mess. Used to be you’d get a notice on your phone and after FaceID, you could just approve from the Home Screen. Now, you have to swipe and click your way through into the app to approve. Same used to be true on the watch. Used to be able to approve with the tap of my watch; no more. Now it displays no account information from the phone, and basically just announces the approval, which you have to approve in the phone app. As an added bonus, if you dismiss the approval on your watch, the announcement on your phone goes away too. So, the app functions, but usability is gone.

Had to do my monthly password update/login protocol. Outlook states to enter password, click that and Authenticator opens up. Clicking continue does nothing except takes you to a blank screen with get codes on the top right. The only thin to do is to click that. It ask for your fingerprint and crashes right after. Reporting the issues says to contact my works IT because this couldn’t be their fault at all. Checked to see when their last update was and it was four weeks ago

The app has been great and convenient; as long as there’s access to the internet, it works. But today when I try to use it, it is locked. It requires Touch ID to unlock the app (or enter the passcode but there isn’t an option popped up for that), while my Touch ID is currently broken. So I can’t verify my email from now on until the problem is fixed. I deleted the app and reinstalled it, which allowed me to enter it without requiring Touch ID. I went settings and wanted to turn off the requiring-Touch-ID feature, yet it wouldn’t let me do it because turning it off also requires Touch ID. I try to seek support but it seems difficult to find where I can report my problem, so I write it in the review. Please fix the bug to enable people to enter passcode. Only allowing Touch ID is highly inconvenient.

Once I made decisions on notifications, two-step authenticator settings, and account information, there was no way to change any of it. Now I can’t receive any codes, and there is no support line for me to reach out to other than a bunch of FAQ pages that lead me nowhere. The app also denies that my account exists, even though it’s been registered on the app for over a month. The settings are minimal in their adaptability, and every link leads me to yet another online page that gives me nothing. It has never been so difficult to access my own account, which was perfectly accessible until the organization telling me to use this app also demanded I change the password, which is what kicked me out in the first place. This app really doesn’t like change.

This is by far the best Authenticator App on the market. However I just got an Apple Watch which has the ability to use this app. Unfortunately on the watch, you have to recreate the logins in the app. Meaning you have to delete and remove the login in the app, then re-add the login on the app(on you phone) so you can add it to the watch at the same time. If you’re like me and you have a bunch of logins, this is very tedious. Needless to say, I will not be using this app on my watch until this is fixed. Please fix this issue and allow the app on the watch to sync directly to the app on the phone so all logins are already there. This is the only reason for the 3 stars.