1Password — a popular password manager for iPhone, Mac and other platforms — added support for recovery codes Thursday. This will make it easier to recover your account when you can’t remember your password.
Recovery codes also will help you get into your 1Password vault if you lose access to your Secret Key.
Recovery codes will make it easy to get back into your 1Password account
Almost all popular password managers support recovery codes, providing a backup way to log in when you can’t recall the password. Prior to Thursday’s announcement, 1Password remained an outlier, as it required you to use your Secret Key for additional authentication in such cases. The problem is that the Secret Key is not easy to memorize.
This changes with support for recovery codes. As long as you remember the email address associated with your 1Password account, you can use the recovery code to reclaim it. After using the code, you must use a new password and download your new Secret Key. Using the new Secret Key, log back into your 1Password vault on a trusted device.
“We know how frustrating and stressful both remembering or forgetting passwords can be — after all, that’s the foundation of why 1Password was founded 18 years ago,” iPassword said in a press release. “Now, millions of people trust us with their sensitive information every day. Since we have that trust, we also want to give you the peace of mind and control that comes with knowing you’ll never be locked out of your account and will always have access to your critical data.”
If you are a 1Password user, you must generate recovery codes through the mobile app or web. It’s important that you don’t put this off, because there’s no way to generate the codes after you lose access to your account. Once generated, store the codes in a safe, secure and easily accessible place. Recovery codes are reusable even after you have used them once.
The only catch with recovery codes is that it will only work in 1Password on the web.
1Password still follows a multilayered identity verification process
Family organizers in 1Password can still reset the account passwords of other users in the family. However, everyone in the plan will also have the option of generating recovery codes.
Despite the addition of recovery codes, 1Password assures in its announcement that all data saved in your vault will remain as secure as before. Besides the recovery code, you also must verify your identity through email verification to reaccess your account.
Apple plans to introduce its own Passwords app with iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia later this year. However, 1Password remains a superior and more feature-rich password manager. Adding support for recovery codes only makes it better.
