So, I hate the Google Authenticator UI. Not sure if many people experienced it, but sometimes the service providers keeps a long name for their TOTP labels. This create a problem where the text exceeded the width of my screen. (Yes, I’m looking at you, Amazon Web Serivces, who definitely could have used AWS instead).

The below example displays that Slack used quite a long label (but definitely acceptable for Slack).

Well there are other authenticator options, but I liked Google Authenticator, because it seems to be the one that is most isolated, so kinda providing the most privacy in my view.

Therefore, I decided to make a tool that could rewrite the label. I made the Gauth Migrate Reencoder.

https://git.samuelpua.com/telboon/gauth-migrate-reencoder

This tool basically takes screenshot of the screen, reading any QR code shown, and allows the users to reencode the TOTP QR code with whatever label the user wishes to use. Now, in my Google Authenticator, AWS simply shows AWS. And if there’s a need to do custom annotation (using Prod, UAT, Dev annotations), it would be possible to custom write your own!

It was a fun short project and now, I can ready much more easily on my Google Authenticator!