Microsoft Authenticator Reviews

by Exochoego🐹❄️❤️

MicrosoftAuthenticator 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 MicrosoftAuthenticator (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 MicrosoftAuthenticator 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.

by Forever Denied

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 MicrosoftAuthenticator 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 MicrosoftAuthenticator, 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.

by Ani O'Moss

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.

by Dd98203

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. MicrosoftAuthenticator also denies that my account exists, even though it’s been registered on MicrosoftAuthenticator 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 MicrosoftAuthenticator also demanded I change the password, which is what kicked me out in the first place. MicrosoftAuthenticator really doesn’t like change.

by Whoopmeister

MicrosoftAuthenticator 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 MicrosoftAuthenticator 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 MicrosoftAuthenticator opens up to so we can have the old view where we see all account keys in one view.

by JHesidenz

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 MicrosoftAuthenticator 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.

by NeedsUserName

MicrosoftAuthenticator 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 MicrosoftAuthenticator 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 MicrosoftAuthenticator wont ghost me one day or backup my authenticator accounts. :/

by TheNgbaka

This is by far the best Authenticator App on the market. However I just got an Apple Watch which has the ability to use MicrosoftAuthenticator. Unfortunately on the watch, you have to recreate the logins in MicrosoftAuthenticator . Meaning you have to delete and remove the login in MicrosoftAuthenticator , then re-add the login on MicrosoftAuthenticator (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 MicrosoftAuthenticator on my watch until this is fixed. Please fix this issue and allow MicrosoftAuthenticator on the watch to sync directly to MicrosoftAuthenticator on the phone so all logins are already there. This is the only reason for the 3 stars.

by BowFamily

MicrosoftAuthenticator 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 MicrosoftAuthenticator 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, MicrosoftAuthenticator functions, but usability is gone.

by Bubblettgirl

I haven’t been able to use MicrosoftAuthenticator 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 MicrosoftAuthenticator .

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.”

by Ryanack24

Overall, I love MicrosoftAuthenticator . 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 MicrosoftAuthenticator . 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!

by AZ_Doc

Been using MicrosoftAuthenticator 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 MicrosoftAuthenticator 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.

by Josh McClintock

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

by Droppachoppa474

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.

by ItsTheArsonist

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.

by Absant

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.
MicrosoftAuthenticator 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.

by MyExDumpedMeForATrashCan

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 MicrosoftAuthenticator because at the time I didn’t have MicrosoftAuthenticator. So that was a good lesson for me to use MicrosoftAuthenticator 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.

by EdLewis2

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.

by 🐸 (Frog)

Let me start by saying MicrosoftAuthenticator works perfectly, the interface is nice, and it is responsive to sign-in requests. I really like the ability to lock MicrosoftAuthenticator 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 MicrosoftAuthenticator icons, so Microsoft, can we have a new icon? Please?

by SimonTuffGuy

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 MicrosoftAuthenticator , I’m seemingly scrolling for for just about all of them except for the primary/top 5.

by Dgrfucjfhjvfhn

Microsoft will NOT remove this off your account under any circumstances if you change your phone or your phone number before removing this you will be permanently locked out of your account. Microsoft will not help you recover your account there best suggestion is to go and try to get your old phone or your old phone number back.

Had a horrible experience with the customer support. Microsoft needs to change they are so rude to there customers.I was told it was my fault because I turned it on. Even if you have all information for your account they do not care and will not help you.

by Squirlnutz

I used this to sign in conveniently while setting up 3 new devices a few months ago. I have a new windows10 machine and instead of signing in as normal I am being forced to use this Authenticator app that does not keep records. I opened MicrosoftAuthenticator and I am having to setup as if it is brand new however, because it did not keep my information I can’t sign in to the new machine, Microsoft account or any thing else because I am being forced to use an app that i can’t use....
I use several different machines mainly Linux but enjoy the convenience of Microsoft.

by SherRoberts

I set it up on my iPhone, and wanted to be able to also use on my iPad. I could find no instructions on how to pull my info that I entered on the iPhone into MicrosoftAuthenticator on the iPad. There is no recovery option on my iPad app, only the iPhone app. There should be a way and I am sure there is, it is just not answered in any FAQ I saw.
Most apps when you set them up on multiple devices you use and sign in, all your stored info is there. Not here and once something gets this complicated I lose interest. So I will try other apps to see if any work across all my devices. I should not have to have separate accounts or re set up all my accounts each time I go to another device.

by CyberData4

The core functionality of MicrosoftAuthenticator is rock solid. It works. Every time. Not one crash.

But my problem is all this time I see no spit polish with some nice to have features.

Example 1: Now, this is petty. Tom Petty. But for accounts that don't automatically pull in an avatar image ID like the option to set it myself. When I click edit I should be able to click each image and set it from photos.

Example 2: For an app that provides security why can't I set a password or touched for opening MicrosoftAuthenticator ? Like everything else I can enable this with the understanding that it's my responsibility to secure said password to access my app. This way no one can snatched my phone when it's on but unlocked at my desk and I'm in the restroom.

It's the little quality of life things that are missing that could really set MicrosoftAuthenticator apart from the competition. That being said I trust MS with my data more than Google so I'll keep this. Good job. But please consider these changes.

by Dookie 2x

Love it for how it works as a remote Authenticator for OneDrive & Outlook, and especially for work to authenticate with TouchID when logging in to work resources.

BUT - really frustrated by how you lose 2 factor or step linkage to services when you have to restore your iPhone (either from having to erase or moving to a new iPhone) and now I’ve lost login access to some services I used it with for 2 factor. One in particular doesn’t even offer email temporary recovery so I have to completely wipe my settings and information to re-establish access.

by Dec 1969

I have activated the notification of MicrosoftAuthenticator so I can see sign-in requests, I have also activated MicrosoftAuthenticator lock mechanism so no one could see my codes.
But when I get a notification and I tap on it, MicrosoftAuthenticator opens locked but it shows me a request that says "approve sign-in?". Anyone with access to my phone can approve it.

Sorry to post here but I couldn't find contact info of developers of MicrosoftAuthenticator on Microsoft website , I can provide Screenshot if needed.

by Rooster Tim

I have recommended MicrosoftAuthenticator to everyone I know. Linking your accounts to an authenticatoe gives you must better control and account security. Should someone attempt to crack into a certain account, and should have the password, I still have to authorize it. If I deny it, I can then change the password when I am able to.
An extra step in security can go a long way, and this is a step in the right direction.

by Imjqe

Microsoft Authenticator is the best MFA app. Since I use my Microsoft account all the time, having a second factor in authenticating gives me assurance & security. And the way it’s implemented is perfect—it sends me a notification, I select a number that matches with the browser, and scan my fingerprint (Touch ID). Amazing! And I can also add 2FA codes of other apps/sites such as Google & Facebook. MicrosoftAuthenticator also has iCloud backup & app lock with a passcode & biometrics.

by Alexcme

The best app just because it has very helpful feature to backup ALL accounts in iCloud (iPhone only) and restore them all on new iPhone (or after reset). Very useful feature, not supported by any other Authenticator app, ie all other ones require both new AND old phone, but with MS Authenticator you can just restore everything to the new phone from backup !!! High five to MS !!!

by BlazinBear

If every authentication app worked like this, they might be used more. MicrosoftAuthenticator is by far more useful than the Google competitor. Having to use both, since some accounts only work on one or the other, I much prefer to use Microsoft. The simple act of hitting approve or selecting a number makes signing in a breeze. This is what the future of logging in should be like.

by Jonny Champ

Just takes the multiple steps of security steps by using MicrosoftAuthenticator is great. Especially if you make your accounts a little to secure Authenticator just helps you add encryption for more security but easier for us users.